There is potential for artificial intelligence to be used in advertising – particularly copywriting – as it has a very definite pattern and structure, but AI-created ads are unlikely to win any awards for creativity just yet.
Beware of letting the tail wag the dog: technology is integral to modern marketing but tools are no replacement for strategy.
Scale, speed and convenience give Chinese brands a lead over their UK counterparts in customer experience – and they’re starting to leave us behind.
Agile might be a much derided buzzword but when marketers take their cues from software developers and begin to work in an ‘agile’ way it can offer big benefits to ways of working.
The move from 4G to 5G has been likened to the shift from typewriter to computer and it will have profound impacts on businesses, consumers and marketing.
Landing customers with unexpected price hikes and made-up fees might increase revenues in the short term but the long-term damage could be devastating.
Black Friday may seem like a big event in the UK retail calendar but it cannot compete with the sheer scale of Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, which racked up more than £24bn in sales this year and is rapidly becoming a key strategic plank of brands’ plans.
The future of marketing study must still focus on a grounding in strategic principles, while the hands-on teaching of tactical tools must be constantly updated.
Direct-to-consumer brands are shaking up the consumer goods market by owning the whole customer experience, rather than simply the product, and there are aspects of how they operate that all brands could learn from.
The big FMCG companies might still get the kudos from marketers, but on results, innovation, insight and diversity they have taken their eyes off the ball and let nimble disruptors in.
It’s often hard to look at trends objectively if you’re living through them, but marketers have got to ask themselves whether what they know today will be proven false tomorrow.
Marketers should be more concerned with doing their day job and making an impact that way than trying to top a list of marketing influencers.
The level of opportunity open to marketers today means marketing’s golden age is now. The challenge, however, is working out which opportunity to seize first.
Marketers no longer need fortune-tellers or clairvoyants to advise them what will happen in the future, a quick look at Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon’s results suggests where the industry is headed.
It is all too easy to base marketing strategies on hope, fear, what has worked in the past and what others are doing, but the best marketers will hinge their decisions on the facts.