Can a Marketing Futurist's Predictions Stand the Test of Time?
Gerd Leonhard is a renowned Marketing futurist. Let's evaluate his predictions from 2013 to today...
1. By 2020, most interruptive marketing will be gone. Instead, marketing will be personalized, customized, and adapted to what I have expressed as my wishes or opt-ins — which essentially means that advertising becomes content.
On track, but not there yet. Digital marketing strives to involve the customer and interact with them rather than push content. YouTube ads and TV commercials are still rather invasive, and not everyone has the power to pay to get rid of them. I hope this change does take effect by 2020.
2. The idea of having a separate marketing department is going to vanish. In the future, the “reason to buy” will be socially motivated
Yes! As noted in my previous post about digital natives, brands spend more than ever on engaging content (like Instagram ads masked as posts, and funny videos like Honda's bad lip reading commercial). Backcountry, an outdoor lifestyle company, does a great job with their email campaigns to entice purchases based on hiking, camping, and climbing lifestyle choices. He is 10/10 spot on.
Example: USA Triathlon article I wanted to read, so I pursued the content of my own accord. This strengthens the trust in USAT and my relationship with the brand. There are lots of examples of film shorts and posts that have the same effect.
3. Location-based services will be immensely valuable and useful, but not until we have some kind of a privacy bank — some authorized authority or entity that will keep the public safe, and that has a neutral objective
Perhaps GDPR will help with the unethical use of data, however this is still a forthcoming change. Would be a welcome update by 2020.
4. Companies are going to try to predict how people feel about their brand, and then adjust in real time by changing features, and starting new conversations with customers in real time.
Yes: Based on Ankit's recent post about automated marketing, this seems to be accurate.
Marketing Automation is a category of software, paired with data & business processes,
designed to streamline, integrate, automate, measure and optimize a broad set of
marketing tasks and workflows across channels and partners.
5. Companies can collect all the data they want, but data alone will never be enough. You still need to reach consumers on an emotional level.
True. Consumers are less likely to be loyal to the brands of yesteryear unless they improve offerings and features.
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