The Next Four Years of Marketing – Marketing Trans4mation
This month Flock celebrates our 4th birthday; 4 years of helping clients transform their marketing strategies, capabilities, operations and procurement.
To celebrate, we’re taking a brief look back over the past four years of change in marketing, and a look into the future by launching Marketing Trans4mation – The Next Four Years of Marketing; a survey into the trends most likely to impact marketers.
4 Short Years Ago In Marketing
The year of 2013 heralded some new trends that have accelerated and become the “new normal”. This shows the rate of change marketers need to adopt to succeed.
The most prominent trends that began during 2013 were:
- Touch ID’s became mainstream with the introduction on the new Apple iPhone5
- Instagram launched their first video feature and Snapchat stories were first introduced. (Snapchat filters had not been invented yet!)
- Mobile music listening via streaming became broadly available to the public. Spotify quickly grabbed 24 million users worldwide (this has since more than doubled) but they were nowhere to be found on the top apps In fact, Pandora was ranked higher and in the top 10 for 2013.
- Drones went mainstream.
- The first Smartwatch to capture smartphone capabilities was made by start-up Omate with the TrueSmart. Smartwatches are now being produced by all major brands like Apple, Microsoft, Nike, and Sony.
4 Years of Flock
Since we launched Flock in January 2013 we have helped transform the marketing of over 40 clients like McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, Ebay, Mondelez, Diageo, Johnson & Johnson, Campbells, Sega, Sage, CNBC, Dubai Tourism, British American Tobacco, Tesco and Toyota.
You can see some of our work here
We have grown 14-fold in 4 years, and now work globally, employing nearly 30 amazing marketers, technologists, and support staff.
It’s fun to think of where we’ll be in 4 years’ time, but we’ll only continue to grow if we deliver excellent marketing transformation solutions. That is why we are working to understand the next set of opportunities and marketing challenges our clients will face.
Marketing Trends 4 Years From Now
Whilst we can’t fully predict what new innovations may change the way we live, and the consequences for marketers, here are a few Flock predictions on what’s to come by 2021:
- The car as a media. Self-driving cars could be commercialised by 2019, with mass production beginning by 2021. Prototype models of these self-driving cars are currently being tested.
- Mobile domination. There were a reported 7.3 billion mobile devices in the world at the end of 2015 – this number is set to rise to 11.6 billion devices by 2020 (exceeding the global population)
- It’s all about video. Mobile video will account for 75% of total mobile traffic
- Teenagers will set the pace. Teenagers will soon become the world’s largest age-group representation. Teenagers are predicted to represent between 1.6 – 2.0 billion people worldwide by 2021. Being nicknamed ‘screenagers,’ they are considered the first group of true ‘digital natives’
- Artificial intelligence everywhere. Predictions are being made that artificial intelligence will be commonly used by 2021, replacing both low-end and high earning employees. And by 2026, reports are showing that automation software will be taking between 33% – 50% of finance jobs.
We’d love your views on the biggest challenges and opportunities that you, as a marketer, feel you’ll have to tackle over the next four years.
Please click here to launch our short Marketing Trans4mation survey. We’re sure you’ll find it interesting. It won’t take long, and we’ll send you the results directly to help inspire your work. And, you have a chance to win £250 of fine wine, food, or beauty products from Liberty.
Say hello to Marketing Trans4mation.