Happy 2021! We have started the year by sharing the global marketing trends for 2021.
Check out the seven trends below and the marketing services that will help you get ahead of the competition. Customers are rewarding companies that authentically – and holistically – meet their needs. This year’s global marketing trends help executives break through the wall of uncertainty and strengthen the human connection we all crave.
1. Purpose
The world has been through one of the worst crises of this century—the coronavirus pandemic—and is just beginning to pick up the pieces and rebuild itself socially and economically. Organizations that know why they exist and who they’re built to serve are uniquely positioned to navigate unprecedented change. Purpose-driven companies inherently understand why they exist and who they are best built to serve regardless of what they sell today.
2. Agility
The current pandemic triggered recession is unique in that it has forced massive, rapid changes in consumer behavior— away from brick-and-mortar stores and toward digital channels. The time is just right for marketers to leverage relevant digital tools and design an organizational road map to make agile marketing a reality. For the first time, the tools to successfully execute agile marketing are readily available to organizations. Now, it’s upon the CMO to help the C-suite articulate a vision that brings these tools to life to engage with and respond to customer needs as they develop.
3. Human Experience
What’s more important — efficiency or the human experience? It’s the choice between taking a cheaper flight or a safer one; buying clothing with the fastest delivery or from the supplier with the most ethically designed supply chain. Pivot your thinking from speed-to-market and efficiency plays to fostering the human connection. Organizations should view themselves as human entities that mirror — and support —the values of those they are built to serve.
4. Trust
To build trust in these turbulent times, brands should look at what people value—rather than what they look like—and ensure their promises are in sync with their competence to deliver on them. When a brand connects on a humane, empathic level, people are more open to trusting its intentions and believing that their needs are truly being addressed.
5. Participation
Marketers can benefit—and stay ahead of the competition— by crafting an engagement strategy that leans into customer participation at its deepest levels. Customer engagement is quickly becoming a two way street where customers participate as brand ambassadors, influencers, collaborators, and innovators. Marketers have more opportunities now than ever to invite their customers to participate in—and bring life to—their strategy, products, and services.
6. Fusion
The worldwide shutdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic have brought our universal human needs to the forefront. These needs range from access to essential products and services and connecting with family and friends to navigating disrupted work environments at a time when “normal” life has fundamentally changed. Organizations have an opportunity to completely reimagine partnership strategies that open the aperture of solutions for the people they serve. People don’t need cars, they need to get from point A to point B, just as they don’t need surgery, they need to be well.
7. Talent
As the marketing landscape undergoes rapid changes, talent models should evolve in-step to position marketing as a competitive differentiator. These themes may sound familiar: Artificial intelligence (AI) is making us faster and smarter workers; people are opting out of traditional 9-to-5 jobs in favour of the gig economy; and new paradigms for on-the-job training and continuous learning are altering how we grow our skill sets, to name a few. Marketers need to push talent transformation to the forefront of their agenda to address this accelerated pace of change.
Download the full Deloitte report here
We help leading organisations and brands to innovate faster and smarter. Whether via brand-led innovation, design thinking, strategy or creative content, we build sustainable brands that make an impact now and in the future. We believe that creativity and strategy are two parts of the same machine. We seek to understand your brand from the inside out, and its market down to their most subtle desires and behaviours. We do this through critical questioning, immersive research, and boundless curiosity.
Building brands that make an impact – now and in the future. From Adventure to Botanicals, Fintech to Renewables and Wine to Wellness, we are particularly proud of the meaningful brands we have built.
