Recently, some colleagues and I were asked some interesting questions pertaining to the future of advertising and marketing. The process sparked some great idea exchanges and not a few arguments. Here were the questions we were asked and my responses:
How do you think the marketing and advertising industry will change in the next 10 years?
With brands recognizing the value of taking practices like analytics, digital, media, and social media efforts in-house and the proliferation of lower-cost alt-agency models, disintermediation will continue to threaten the value proposition of ad agencies as we know them today. As a result and in an effort to maintain value to end clients, agencies will evolve in a few vital ways : 1) they will become conductors of culture, moving away from trying to affect audiences through advertising created within their four walls to trying to spot, leverage and orchestrate culture-in-the-wild through brand participation, services, and tools; 2) in a time where marketers wish to do more with less, agencies will pursue new compensation models and trim headcount to more agile teams that will help maximize profits, and 3) acting more as management consultancies, agencies will focus upstream by leveraging their ability to glean consumer insights to help companies and brands affect their core businesses and alter products and services to be more in-line with consumer needs.
How do you think the marketing and advertising industry will change and look 100 years from now?
In 100 years, media proliferation will be so vast that content networks will be as unique as the individuals who consume them. Therefore, mass media will be effectively dead—and disruptive advertising along with it. In its place, Brands will develop new relationships with consumers, partnering with loyalists to create content and compensating audiences for consuming and distributing content. Performance measurement will be at the center of all marketing efforts. "Social media" the term will be a thing of the past, but companies that engage in direct communication and participation with consumers will be the standard.
What technology do you think will have the biggest impact on your industry in the next 100 years and how will it change your industry?
Connected television. Interactive TV is here now in a very rudimentary form, but once televisions become as social, addressable, and useful as PCs, the way we watch TV will be changed forever. Like indie musicians today who have bypassed the recording industry going direct to consumer, so will garage-based studios who will create programming for niche audiences. Audience members will be involved in the story lines and work together to progress the narrative. Brands will spot and sponsor upstart content producers directly. Consumers will purchase directly via their televisions. And robots. Robots with lasers.
