Game changers and opportunities

Three major themes have continued from 2013 and are set to drive the agenda for 2014

1. Video Marketing - including TV advertising

2. Agile Marketing - Making real-time real

3. Content Marketing - Content is King. Really.

But thats just the start - where do we see the new strands emerging and what are the watchwords for 2014.

1. Google vs Facebook

As the internet giants continue development on mobile and video advertising products the big story will be who wins the brand budgets.

Google is in the box seat by predetermining spends through upfront agreements with big agency groups. They need to hold the consumer audience to make this work.

Facebook is going around this by announcing deals directly with the big advertisers. They need to show ROI to win.

Can Facebook steal the right consumer moments and take advertising budgets with it?

2. Flexible tech

Curved screens and wearable technology threatens to make moving pictures available even in the most temporary of situations or the most obscure shapes.

Piping pictures into flexible materials provides infinitely more opportunities for digital out-of-home including immersion in confined spaces.

Will the adoption of networked home and personal tech outpace consumers acceptance of this invasion of personal space or will the trade off in data and convenience encourage them to open their front doors (and wallets)?

3. Outsource the dumb stuff

Smarter devices have started to replace the things we dont have time to think about for instance changing batteries in the smoke alarm (https://nest.com/uk/).

Were at the start of the great brain transition where we outsource the dumb stuff to machines. How does this effect digital media? How does this effect society and sensitive data issues following Snowden disclosures or Target data leaks?

If the fridge starts ordering the basic foodstuffs suddenly SMEG becomes the channel to market, packaging and point of sale becomes less effective and Ocados distribution capability becomes core business for every supermarket. Brands may take a beating.

4. Consumer unplugged

Anyone looking at retail website stats from this Christmas will be seeing the impact of showrooming on the mobile traffic statistics.

They will also be looking at the tablet statistics trying to discern the living room stimulus that drove the behaviour.

Then theyll be examining the attribution model realising cross device behaviour is very hard to track making PC-cookied sales look exceptionally efficient.

The digital show room, living room, workroom strategies will be the focus of retailers leading up to Christmas 2014.

13.01.2014

By Ovie Esiekpe

LINK:	http://www.uniquedigital.co.uk/blog/emerging-trends-of-2014/...
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