What do the smartest marketing minds in the world want to see happen in 2020? There’s only one way to find out…ask.
In search of answers, we tapped into the network of the B2B Institute, a new think tank here at LinkedIn researching the future of B2B. We asked all of our experts the same question: “What are the big changes you’d like to see in the marketing industry next year?”
Here are their responses:
Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK
Have we lost sight of the fact that targeting can be overdone? Of these four approaches, which is the best? 1) A poor message, perfectly targeted, 2) A poor message, reasonably well targeted, 3) A great message perfectly targeted, 4) A great message, reasonably well targeted. I would argue that, in the long term, it is 4. 1 might be better than 2, but 4 is better than 3.
Les Binet, Group Head of Effectiveness, adam&eveDDB
I’d like to see businesses rediscovering the awesome selling power of great brand advertising. Stop spamming people with offers and messages they don’t care about. Stop destroying margins with excessive discounting. Stop trying to do “more with less”. Have some courage, and invest in stuff that real people actually see, like and talk about. You’ll find it makes you far more money than any efficiency drive ever could.
Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
My answer is 'more informed skepticism’ whereby we are more critical of claims of big, extreme effects from marketing activities and stop wasting time chasing silver bullets. It would be great to see more R&D that draws from and builds on the Laws of Growth we have. Double Jeopardy exists, Duplication of Purchase Law exists, Ehrenberg’s Law of Buying frequency exists, so rather than debate the empirically obvious, let’s spend more energy on how to use this information to make better marketing decisions.
Fran Cassidy, Founder, Cassidy Media Partnership
I would like to see more marketers use more commercial language and less jargon. Using jargon outside marketing doesn’t make you intelligent, it makes you irrelevant. I want them to focus on finding the data and metrics that show the margin they can deliver or the market share they can protect or grow. Don’t just rejoice in the reach, prove the profit.
Peter Field, Independent Marketing and Advertising Professional
I’d like 2020 to be the year that marketing’s voice started to be heard more strongly in the c-suites of corporations, encouraging them to think longer term and offer a brand-led growth vision to investors. I’d like it to be the year that marketing turned the corner in its fightback against short-termism and began to roll back the tidal wave of tactical short-term initiatives and disposable creativity that do nothing to build brands. And I’d like 2020 to be the year that big data became used more often as a tool for brand strategy than for activation targeting; that we all realized that the misuse of big data has been a very destructive force over the last decade. In short, I’d like 2020 to be The Year of The Brand.
Rob Norman, Industry Advisor and Board Member
1. Focus on the data that matters; find and use signals that are of high value to your company but don’t intrude on your customers right to privacy and confidentiality 2. Filter every decision through the prism of intelligence, imagination and inclusion. More specifically were you smart? Did you go beyond the obvious? Did you take all your stakeholders with you?
Karen Nelson-Field, Founder-CEO, Amplified Intelligence
Advertisers are waking up to the fact that impressions are a diluted and incomparable measure of media value. When many are not human, or not seen due to low viewability, our trading currency is failing advertisers. In 2020, I hope that advertisers will start to understand that attention, and more specifically attentive reach, is a measure that makes sense as part of our trading future. It’s comparable across platforms, it is outward facing (so it considers the viewers behavior not that of the platform), it reflects the vast modal differences across platforms including viewability and it is related to sales outcomes.
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