Somewhere in 2012, I was so convinced that the future of advertising and marketing was in conviction, belief, connections and hope.
This was the outcome of my understanding of several things that the great brands then were selling to their customers. Most of them were selling belief, a belonging that created an almost cult like following of their brands.
It was in 2012 that I came to the conclusion that every marketer’s job is to sell conviction, not benefit to their target market.
The way I saw it, benefit was secondary, a product of conviction and not the other way around. I mean, at the time, whatever one company could manufacture or sell, could be done better by someone else with the growth of technology.
Someone out there with a better technology was sure to make it better, faster and cheaper than you. And thus, I believed it was the soul of the brand — its representation, purpose and beliefs that embody it — that people usually bought into.
But fast forward to 2018 and I could not have been wronger.
The future of advertising wasn’t all that touchy-feely, marketing-as-soul-food stuff.
The future is in indeed the complete opposite of my thoughts from 2012, marketing and advertising now is something far more cold and dead, detached and eyeball-capturing. It is all about the best algorithms, most intuitive bots, Facebook, Google and… a lot of stuff very few people actually care about.
So what’s left for marketer who belief in belonging and creating a brand people truly love and connect with?
The same things as before, the stuff that I can state will never ever go away. As Seth Godin will put it, “Belief. Belonging. Mattering. Making a difference. Tribes. We have an unlimited need for this.”
So instead of asking yourself what the next big trend is, the next big thing coming down the pike, ask yourself instead, what DOESN’T change? What will ALWAYS matter to people? And how do I get my product or service to be a part of that equation?
Then maybe you can survive this era of algorithms, fake news and impersonal advertisement.
Think about it.