What marketing trends will emerge in 2019?

What marketing trends will emerge in 2019? If what you write is not a well-known complaint without reason, you will probably be slapped in the face. On the one hand, popular culture and marketing hotspots are almost uncontrollable, with too many accidental factors that no one can predict; on the other hand, some industry macro trends have been "predicted" for many years and did not emerge only in 2019. Predicting the trends that will characterize 2019 is not an easy task.

Although deviations are inevitable, I still want to write down my own guesses about marketing trends in 2019. After all, one important thing I have learned in recent years is: no one is perfect, so don't be afraid of being scolded or slapped in the face.

Trend 1: Polarization of creativity

Advertising has become simple and crude in recent years, which is due to media fragmentation and declining user attention. But in 2019, I expect the situation to improve.

On the one hand, in order to quickly expand market share, the advertisements used in hot sectors will still be simple and crude. The same applies to some brands that are at the financing stage and small brands that want to attract attention. On the other hand, the intensified competition in some mature industries will screen out more good ideas and present them to the public. That is, creative quality can become polarized, but both extremes will work.

There are two bases for optimistic judgments about good ideas. First, the great downward pressure on the domestic economy will lead to advertisers having stricter requirements on creativity. The overall creative level will be refined, but there will not necessarily be any "god-level" cases. Second, content supervision will continue to become stricter. Advertisements that are too vulgar and crude are likely to have content risks and lead to public relations crises, which is something that brands should try their best to avoid in today's environment.

In addition, the application of "Thousands of Faces for Thousands of People" in offline advertising scenarios may be accelerated. For example, Focus Media's advertising machine can push different advertising content to users with different tags through facial AI recognition. This means that the efficiency of advertising distribution will be improved and the friendliness of advertising will be more important.

Trend 2: Explosion of 3D/augmented reality

Generally speaking, the renewal of interactive forms of advertising is related to the popularization of new technology applications. When technology stagnates slightly, innovative breakthroughs in advertising content will occur.

As a mobile carrier, the biggest change in recent years is that Apple has equipped its mobile phone with a bionic chip with a neural network engine and a deep-sensing front camera, and the most obvious perception for users is the phone unlocking with Face ID.

In addition to Face ID, these technological breakthroughs mean the popularization of real-time 3D modeling and augmented reality. After the release of iPhone X, everyone can create their own emoji package, which was popular for a while on platforms such as Tik Tok. If we open the iPhone details page on Apple's official website, we will find that 3D augmented reality has become a main feature. Apple's technological innovation has always been a trend-setter in the mobile phone industry, and in the future mobile phone interactions will move towards augmented reality.

The recent popularity of ZEPETO also shows that the 3D form is recognized by users. Next year, I guess that the 3D user modeling form will be used more in marketing promotion.

In addition, the next one or two years will see a wave of 5G phone replacement, which will work together with cloud computing, IOT, and AI to form the Internet of Everything. However, 5G will not be rolled out on a large scale next year, and the marketing impact of 5G will not be seen until 2020 at the earliest.

Trend 3: Popularization of a large number of subcultures

In fact, this has always been a trend of cultural change, but it has been most obvious in the past two years. There are quite a few subcultures that have become popular in recent years. For example, the two-dimensional culture is no longer a niche with the listing of Bilibili, and the selection of materials for variety shows has frequently turned to niche music genres such as hip-hop, rap, and electronic music. Through the magnification of online variety show screens, they have become a mainstream, and even phenomenal singers such as PGOne have emerged due to various events.

Although the "inventions and creations" of internet celebrity Geng Gongshi are similar to those of welders that can be found everywhere, as consumer content, compared to the food tutorial section where food writer *** is located, the steel handicraft creativity is actually a niche and small enough; going back further, there is the popularity and ban of ASMR (intracranial orgasm), which has caused quite a bit of controversy, and these are both typical examples of the popularization of subcultures.

Under normal circumstances, those born after 1995 will fully enter the society in 2019. If we calculate based on their undergraduate graduation at the age of 22, most of them will have already been working for two years in 2019. Masters degree holders born in 1995 will also formally enter the society in large numbers in 2019.

As mentioned in previous articles, Generation Z already has its own unique circle culture. In the eyes of the mainstream people born in the 80s and 90s, Generation Z culture is relatively "weird" and "niche", but as the influence of Generation Z grows, I believe that many subcultures will enter the mainstream vision next year.

Trend 4: Vertical KOLs are on the rise

It is expected that online celebrities KOL will show a trend of verticalization and fragmentation, which is actually related to the "popularization of subculture" mentioned above. When the niche field goes to the masses, various commercial needs will emerge, so some people will work for a living and emerge as KOLs or commercial service providers of emerging cultures.

From the KOL perspective, vertical KOLs have greater user stickiness, more interactions, and are more persuasive. They are more capable of bringing products in their professional fields than general celebrities and may be more favored by advertisers.

The short video format that has become popular this year has a general trend of evolving from entertainment to skill-based. Just like the content segmentation of WeChat public accounts many years ago, various vertical knowledge, skill, and style short videos have emerged, among which many vertical KOLs who can sell goods will appear.

At the same time, the highly-anticipated VLOG may explode in 2019. Although the domestic VLOG ecosystem seems relatively primitive now, a more mature industry and consumption logic may emerge next year, and a large number of emerging Internet celebrities may also appear in the VLOG field.

In addition, due to the decline in data of WeChat public accounts, more user time and traffic will be distributed to other vertical social media, such as Xiaohongshu, Hupu, Jike, Xueqiu, etc.

Trend 5: Cross-border joint products are becoming more common

It’s not just the national trend that shines this year, but more likely the cross-border IP collaborations like Uniqlo UT. The national trends on the market now, such as Liushen cocktails and White Rabbit lipstick, are more of a marketing event, but next year they may be further integrated into product customization and promoted as a normalized new product strategy.

Products are becoming more fragmented and semi-customized, which may make hunger marketing shine again. Various types of mid-to-low-priced cross-border products such as cosmetics and clothing will continue to be launched in large quantities this year, and "trend" will still be the pursuit of the younger promotion of all consumer goods.

But everything has its limits. This year's national trend cross-border marketing has been on the screen too many times, so the effect will naturally be discounted next year. I personally estimate that it will be difficult to make too much of a splash. There will still be a fixed group of people, but breaking the circle of communication may not be that easy. However, from another perspective, this is also a return to the essence of cross-border marketing.

Conclusion

In addition to the above speculations, there are also the increased online dissemination of luxury goods, the popularity of vertical screen advertising, the deepening of new retail, the advancement of consumer stratification, the harvest of traffic dividends from going to the countryside and overseas, and the rise of offline scene marketing... These trends are either limited to a certain segment or have become an explicit basic consensus in the industry, so I will not elaborate on them.

Although many people believe that 2018 was an extremely difficult year for the marketing/advertising/new media industry, I believe that the more difficult it is, the more room there is for optimization, and opportunities and changes are often hidden here. Perhaps in the next few years, the entire industry will undergo earth-shaking changes, and new leaders may emerge.

Source: Spread Gymnastics