Fear, anxiety and the 'Future 100'
No marketing event is complete without a trend story . So Emma Chiu from research agency JWT Intelligence takes her audience through a list of the dominant stories of 2020. Gender bending, blurring, purpose, Gen Z, biodegradable packaging : it all passes by. The big picture: consumers (and millennials in particular) feel insecure about broader societal changes. They are chronically overconsumed with digital products, with social media at the forefront.
In a surprise, more than a third of Gen Z (people born after 2000) say they’ve stopped using social media altogether in the past year. The “time well spent” movement is one example of how brands are already tapping into this trend. Another example is cosmetics brand Lush, which removed its social media channels from its marketing mix last year.
Very interesting and actually a counter-argument to the above is that youth culture is increasingly taking over brand thinking. Of Gen Z, 63 percent now think of themselves as an influencer and 31 percent as a brand. Needless to say, this is largely fueled by Instagram culture.
Furthermore, brand purpose , the positioning of brands in broader societal discussions, is still the name of the game , according to Chiu . And as long as culture is so highly politicized, that is to say, as long as people form their identities around political divides (hello bubble!), it will probably remain that way for a while. The Nike campaign around Colin Kaepernick is an example that obviously does not go unmentioned in this context.
Good story, but what always strikes me about usa telegram data trendwatchers like Chiu is a kind of myopia for other, parallel trends. I mention alt-right , aging, new nationalism and the renaissance of traditionally male values via influencers like Jordan Peterson . Countermovements that are almost completely ignored by marketers.
I think this has everything to do with the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the creative class (hello, bubble!) to which marketers belong: young, affluent and internationally oriented. Aren’t the choices marketers make for certain messages largely inspired by their worldview? It could well be. And it could well be that we are missing opportunities in this area.
Good news for content creators
Often when I think about branding and marketing, I think of something like physics in the time of Aristotle. So much is unquantified, so much is based on assumptions, so much is based on ambiguity and yes, quite a bit of woolly language. And of course a lot of that is fueled by pitches from advertising agencies that can’t help but stick new, hip stickers on principles that are actually unchangeable.
but you will also receive the building blocks to set up a #parentfriendly campaign for your brand.
