In-depth | In 2019, which marketing trends will kill you?

As usual, I list my guesses about the marketing trends in 2019. All opinions and speculations are just mentioned briefly, and no long-term analysis will be made (perhaps they will be separated and written separately later). In addition, the dimensions and depths of discussion in the article are different, so please select them by yourself.

1. Growth stops growing like crazy

To: All marketers

The year 2018 was the year when the concept of “growth” became mainstream. All the opinions of experts, corporate positions, and training courses were all focused on “growth” at once, as if companies had never experienced new customer acquisition, development, and expansion before this word came out… Paying attention to “marketing effectiveness” is a good thing, but deifying it as a panacea for “Internet celebrities” is a bit of an exaggeration.

Everything that goes up must come down. Perhaps the end of “growth” in 2019 will be the same as the fate of “new retail” and “pop-up stores”.

2. Marketing career development is under siege

To: Corporate Marketing Department

I think our colleagues at the marketing manager level have vaguely felt that “the good days are fading away.” From the perspective of the scope of job functions, the operations department is seizing the management rights of the company's self-media positions (WeChat, Weibo and Douyin), and the content teams from the media, editing and screenwriting circles are competing for the "daily creative" work; in terms of channel cooperation, the new form of sales department has a stronger voice... It can be said that the "career moat" of marketing is becoming narrower and shallower .

At the same time, a "gang fight" over the prospects for marketing development will also begin: the "creative insight faction" that transformed from major 4A advertising and well-known agency companies in the past few years is suffering under the result-oriented approach of their bosses who require quantitative KPIs for everything, and is gradually declining. The "data technology faction" based on big data and technological innovation, although it advocates MarTech and neuromarketing, is still crossing the river by feeling the stones before the system is built.

For leaders of the marketing department, how to maintain the functions and voice of the department in the company has become more important in 2019. For marketing practitioners, in the era of knowledge explosion, what new skills to learn, whether to continue to do "marketing" or switch to "operation" or other functional departments, will be a difficult and important decision .

3. Creative hot stores become “normalized”

To: Agency

Just like the half-life cycle of various Internet celebrity words, the overall "premium value" of creative hot shops in the industry is also facing a rapid decline. On the one hand, since there is no standard definition of "creative hot shops", advertising companies or studios of all sizes claim to be creative hot shops as long as they can come up with ideas, making this "market segment" quickly saturated and homogenized . Agencies without "killer skills/fame" can only survive by bargaining;

On the other hand, the more flexible and fragmented marketing methods have made the original 4A advertising agencies willing to accept being just an agency for a certain link in the project, rather than being the leader throughout the year. Such a change means that large agencies also have the dual advantages of flexibility and full-case capabilities, which poses a more daunting challenge to the "creative hot shops" that are biased towards one specialty.

If there are no more outstanding and clear benchmark creative hot shops, then this word will probably be labeled as "small advertising company" again in the minds of business owners .

4. Art base is finally turning around

To：Art base creative people

In the past, the creative partners of Art Base were most likely to experience a mid-life crisis in the workplace - they were very good at doing things with their hands and had a high appreciation of beauty, but knew little about marketing tactics and were not strong in social communication with others. They often suffered from the embarrassing situation of being old but having nowhere to go except working in advertising companies (or opening creative hot shops). But today, companies prefer creative people, especially those who are good at various artistic skills such as design, hand-drawing, video shooting, editing, etc. The "creative task forces" within some large companies are also often very popular .

This should be a good change for the advertising and marketing industry, thanks to the bosses who are becoming more and more knowledgeable about "creativity", and thanks to the major paid knowledge training programs, which make "copywriting and planning" seem to be something that anyone can do.

5. (Tencent-affiliated) Social e-commerce triggers marketing iteration

To：All

E-commerce/new retail has always been an area that Tencent has been obsessed with, whether it is the reorganization of Tencent's organizational structure, Pinduoduo's sudden entry into WeChat Wallet during the Double 12 period, or the accidental exposure of the Penguin Logistics trademark... the industry is waiting for the emergence of Tencent's direct social e-commerce platform.

This may seem to be just speculation in the business field, but in fact it will bring extremely interesting shocks and imagination space to domestic marketing methods. Philip Kotler once wrote in "Marketing Revolution 4.0" that "In the future, users' choices will become more and more horizontal, and they will become more cautious about brand marketing and rely more on the "F element." The F element here refers to family, friends, followers, and fans. Coincidentally, these F element groups are all on your Tencent APP (WeChat).

Imagine if you found that 20 of your friends on WeChat had already watched a book or a movie and gave it positive reviews, would you rush to watch it over the weekend? If a popular food has been checked in or recommended by many people, would you buy it to try?

The emoticons, Moments ads, and WeChat articles recommended to you are all used by xx of your friends.

If the true value of social networking can be properly utilized, the so-called word-of-mouth ratings, the traditional methods and standards of online advertising and marketing hype will collapse instantly!

6. ATT acquires another advertising agency

To:Agency

Just as agencies need to cling to the thighs of Internet giants, Internet giants occasionally need the capabilities and resources of agencies. In 2018, when Alibaba acquired Focus Media, most of its peers were just watching and commenting on how Jiang Shishi eloquently sold the elevator advertising company that no one wanted to watch, but few people noticed Alibaba's layout and ambition in dominating online and offline traffic entry resources .

Similarly, within ATT, T Tencent and Toutiao are in urgent need of acquiring more 2B (enterprise service level) business and commercial monetization opportunities. They also need to further expand their business territory and increase their service capabilities (refer to Alimama).

So what kind of agency will be more worthy of ATT’s attention? Offline resource type? Technical data type? Or is it a full-case agency type? It seems like everyone has a chance.

7. Back to the old business, the advertising and communication industry is making a comeback at the age of 35

To: Agency

We talked about a lot of hopeful topics, as well as some not-so-happy ones. "30/35 years old" used to be a watershed for advertising practitioners . Advertisers at this age would often make a choice to become their own boss or try working for a corporate company. Therefore, in the past, the proportion of ordinary advertising people aged 35 in advertising companies was very small. But 2019 may be the opposite, and the "35-year-olds" are back.

Due to society's pessimistic attitude towards the economic downturn, many well-known companies have begun to streamline and lay off employees, and startups that claim to be unicorns may die in the winter before their horns have even grown. Those "advertisers" who were eager to try during the Internet and investment boom will find it difficult to find a way to gain both fame and fortune at this time. Compared to moving to a stable large company where there are no mid- to high-end positions being recruited and young people are scrambling for mid- to low-end positions, returning to an advertising agency seems to be a good choice. Of course, these “35-year-olds” also include partners of creative hot shops.

If this is true, foresighted agency companies may wish to take advantage of the opportunity to buy a few good helpers . After all, these old guys who own houses, cars, loans, old people, children and cats are much easier to use than the young guys who quit their jobs at the slightest provocation.

8. Production committee/partnership system may become a new way for companies to make profits through marketing

Nowadays, almost no company will underestimate "content production". Small companies hope to get some traffic and sales through cross-border cooperation with IP, larger companies are considering betting on whether a movie, TV or variety show can become a hit, and more advanced companies are thinking about whether they can create an IP and nurture it to get rich in the future.

But at the same time, the things that companies worry about are very similar: not having enough money, not enough experience in becoming popular, not having enough time and patience, and not having enough resources. In a word, they don’t want to be led by the nose by the content providers, but they can’t handle it on their own.

Then it may be worth taking a look at the "production committee/partnership system" originated from Japanese animation. It is a new and cost-effective approach in which several companies take the lead, share risks, clearly define interests, and plant seeds, water, and harvest fruits together .

After all, cross-border brand collaboration is not a difficult task, and cross-border brand IP (content) collaboration is also worth the forerunners to reap the rewards!

I hope you can make judgments, think about these trend guesses, and come up with response plans. After all, sometimes it all depends on your thoughts whether to reap or be reaped.

Source: Scold me (ID:mawo178)