I love this time of year. Halloween is past and we are headed directly into the holidays. We’re on a collision course with the gift-giving season, which for me centres around Christmas.
It’s also the time of year when pundits prognosticate for the impending period of the next 12 months. We get to pretend we know the future!
I will start my prognostications with one simple fact. I have NO idea what next year is going to look like. As you read this, the election is likely not yet over, even though it should be. Whoever is in the White House in 2021, things are likely to be very unsettled politically, so let’s move on from politics.
Covid-19 will still be the main driver of 2021, at least until mid-year. Likely summer. Vaccines will become available, but it will take some time before they hit critical mass.
Covid-19 has been the most recent driver of growth for all things digital. In the last 20 years we witnessed the dot-com bubble bust, we lived through the great recession, and now we will have lived through a massive global pandemic.
Every disruption has crafted a larger push toward digital society. This time around we see retail go dramatically online. Video conferencing is now the norm. Distance learning has taken over. People spend alarming amounts of their time online now, and as a result we’re creating even more data.
The irony is that there are now far more constraints around what you can do with that data.
My prediction for 2021 is that business will continue to go digital and retail stores will continue to change or shutter. I think retail may actually shrink in terms of individual footprint, and stores will become ‘way stations’ for exchanges and appointment shopping.
Good stories are important and knowing how your customers think, and what message will resonate with them, are still the core of a good marketer’s role.
More window shopping and browsing will shift online, and malls will have to cut individual stores in half, increase occupancy and look at more experiential ways to use the space.
Think of how Tesla uses its stores to feature their cars, and then sends you online to buy. The retail business is going to be the extension of a digital-centric customer experience rather than the other way around.
Media CPMs are going to drop for the first half of 2021. The elections will be over, the holidays will be over. Post-election, it is normal to see a slight dip in the economy. Things go through a transition period, and this election is going to be especially difficult no matter who wins.
If there is stability after the fact, then we will be back to normal. If uncertainty continues, CPMs will remain depressed later into the year. Companies always pull back on marketing when there is uncertainty, and this will continue that trend.
Creativity will be back in the spotlight in 2021. Data, as I have said most recently, may go the way of the dodo bird, but creative will be the thing that marketing effectiveness hinges on once again.
You will still be able to do some behavioral targeting and contextual targeting, but consumers respond to the right message and not just the right time and place.
Good stories are important and knowing how your customers think, and what message will resonate with them, are still the core of a good marketer’s role.
I’m sure far smarter pundits than I will come up with some deep, technically oriented predictions, but I like to keep it simple. I like to make sure that the people I speak to can identify the key takeaways.
I’d love to know what you think will happen this coming year. Leave your ideas below!
This story was first published by MediaPost.com and is republished here with the permission of the author.
Cory Treffiletti is chief marketing officer at Voicera. He has been a thought leader, executive and business driver in the digital media landscape since 1994. In addition to authoring a weekly column on digital media, advertising and marketing since 2000 for MediaPost‘s Online Spin, Treffiletti has been a successful executive, media expert and/or founding team member for a number of companies and published a book, Internet Ad Pioneers, in 2012.
