Many Americans believe that the US economy is permanently damaged, as noted at Business News Daily. Yet paradoxically, the US stock market continues to test new highs. In any event, the business landscape has been becoming a bit unpredictable and flappy. The word “flappy” means slack, loose, easily flapped. Dong Nguyen, the developer of a top-selling game “Flappy Bird” in 2014, pulled the plug on his game because he said it became an “addictive product.” This and and the fact that the organic food market is taking off are good signs that there is still a sense of conscience and consciousness in the US consumer marketplace, despite the extreme celebrity worship, and so forth. We’re not quite entering the Zombie Apocalypse just yet. According to some experts I’ll quote, being real and not ‘salesy’ or shmaltzy-pretentious will be important in 2015.
There are some disagreements among the experts as to what types of marketing approaches will be best for 2015. For example, there is a paradox between a desire for privacy and a desire for NSA-appealing communication using interconnected devices. There is also a paradox between desired transparency and increasingly rigid political correctness in society. Nevertheless, there are some overlapping trends and approaches that most experts agree on.
1. Forbes offers that, “Transparency will become the most important tool of marketing. Consumers are going to continue to exert power and influence. The idea of radical transparency is something that few brands are taking advantage of now, and most brands fight it. Next year the best brands won’t be those with the best stories, or sort of made up fictional stories, but those that will give an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer, at any given time.”
2. Paradigm Next offers that marketing trends are gearing closer to personalization and convenience. “Content Creation: More businesses are starting to realize the importance of content and its effect on creating a dedicated community of brand loyalists and followers. Content creation will continue to thrive in the form of original videos, digital publications and more.”
3. Search Engine Journal highlights “Connected Life Platforms” as key. The top 3 tech trends that Google found relate to the Emergence of “Connected Life Platforms” as a top subject. Connected life platforms is a phrase that Google coined for gadgets as the, “Internet of things”, which connect everyone and everything to everyone and everything else. Of note, “Drones are becoming a true consumer electronic. Searches for drones grew 2.6x this past year.”
4. Fast to Create confirms “…the importance of creating compelling content, of all lengths, and across all platforms.” and a group of experts. They described how standard celebrity worship and YouTube micro-celebrity worship will continue to thrive. Another expert declared, “Video will be the recipient of this creative explosion, and new ways of approaching and thinking about video will transform marketing and media the way programmatic and automation have these last 18 months.”
So there you have it. The more technology allows for just about anything, the more the onus is on creativity in order to stand out from the crowd. It can help to look at Google search trends to see what types of subjects people are interested most in and what these searches imply.
2014 Trending Topics of Google
1. Robin Williams (possible motives: celebrity worship, intrigue of death and suicide)
2. World Cup (possible motives: sports worship, entertainment, distraction)
3. Ebola (possible motives: fear of death, knowing signs, how to be careful and survive)
4. Malaysia Airlines (possible motives: fear of death, unsolved mystery, how to be careful and survive)
5. Flappy Bird (possible motives: free game, entertainment, fun technology)
It might seem as though we are marketing to a society of fun-craving, celebrity-worshiping zombies diving headlong into an increasingly Orwellian tech-controlled fishbowl society, but that would be too negative. The decline of Facebook is a sign that people aren’t willing to follow trends just for the sake of it. Experts predict that Facebook will continue to fade more dramatically as a marketing venue and less so as a personal conversation venue.
Privacy will remain a key subject, with some demanding more and others throwing caution to the wind. A trend towards a perceived need for personalization and the human touch in a world of increased technology will continue.
There will be a need to explore new frontiers as well. Jon Jackson offered, “In order to grow creatively, you need to have new experiences—and a lot of the experiences that produce the most growth come from traveling and interacting outside of your comfort zone. I’m a big believer in doing at least one thing each year that you’ve never done before.”
After the shelving of the game Flappy Birds, “Flappy People” and “Flappy Cat” games become popular. But Angry Birds was the original. Some called the developer of Flappy Bird a marketing genius. But he said he just got lucky. I bring this up to show how quickly and dramatically the marketing landscape can be influenced in our highly inter-connected Internet-based business world. In 2015 we are entering a world where quirky creativity can be easily equated with marketing genius.
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