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Part II: 'Behind the Curtain' B2C Marketing Trends for 2015

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In my last post we discussed the growing role of technology in marketing and its impact on the B2C marketing back-office. Now, I want to dive into the four remaining, more general B2C marketing tends CEB is seeing for 2015.

5. Marketing functions discover that agile(ish) marketing counter-intuitively requires more (not less) planning.

We’ve seen a number of mid-sized and large-enterprise marketing teams experimenting with real-time, sense-and-respond approaches to marketing largely to keep up with fast-moving consumers and technologies. They are discovering that, when operating in this agile-ish manner, there are simply too many options for how they could try to engage with the marketplace. As a result, they are dialing down the time they spend in annual brand or marketing planning activities—these are too slow moving and ultimately don’t survive real life in the marketplace. On the flip side, they are increasing the time they spend in two other areas. First, they are focusing on strategic thinking and definition to better guide in-the-moment decisions. This will help them immediately know which engagement opportunities they shouldn’t consider, and which ones they should more actively seek out. Second, they are spending more time doing contingency planning. Meaning, they are trying to anticipate the ways their marketing efforts could provoke different responses, and are planning how they can recognize which of those scenarios is emerging and prepping to take action quickly as they see those scenarios emerging. Net-net, they are spending more time on strategy and planning to support agile marketing, but it is a very different kind of planning than what they are used to.

6. Purpose-driven marketing evolves into “movement” marketing.

Purpose driven-marketing and shared values have been on the rise in marketing for some time now. In 2015, leading brands will stop settling for building purpose into their positioning, or even their culture. They will aggressively seek to mobilize cultural movements around their purpose. To do that, they will build ecosystems of partners and influencers, a great many of which will be mini-screen “celebs” who are deftly using social media to magnify their influence. Mini-screen influencers will bring their authenticity and creativity to the table. Big brands will bring their extended audience reach and resources. Together, they will create cultural movements. The best ones will actually improve the world we live in.

7. Big money moving in and out of social media.

Some of the largest marketing functions on the planet made 2014 the year they would learn (more or less definitively…for now) how social media efforts—earned, owned and paid—drive actual sales. They did that by linking social efforts into their CRM systems, and bringing sophisticated analytics to bear. As a result, in 2015, you’ll see big brands make aggressive resource shifts into some social media tactics, and out of others. Those shifts will vary by category, but I predict we’ll see the most pronounced shifts around earned and owned social efforts related to big sponsorships and events, where natural conversation energy is at its highest.

8. Using mass media as an amplifier of earned media.

Marketers will rethink media sequencing. While some have been managing media planning this way for some time, we’ll start to see this approach go mainstream. Instead of starting with mass media and then using earned to amplify it; they’re doing the inverse. Leading marketers seed messages with influencers before using mass to amplify existing buzz. This gives influencers exclusive access to messages, which encourages them to spread the word – providing more cost-effective distribution as well as extra credibility for marketing’s messages.

What else are you seeing “behind the curtain” for B2C marketing in 2015? Stay tuned for our take on B2B “behind the curtains” trends.