Discover marketing trends from around the world, how they are shaping the marketing climate of 2016 and what brands are making the most of them.
The year 2015 saw many changes on the marketing front, with many concepts like inbound, content marketing, big data and the Internet of Things having gone through a maturity phrase. However, 2016 seems to have fewer surprises up its sleeve so far, but the emergence of exciting technology like consumer VR headsets means that ideas we were speculating about months ago have finally arrived.
So how is marketing responding in the midst of such trending shifts, and what are the distinguishing traits of how different regions approach marketing challenges?
China Gets Serious About Content Marketing
Asian markets like China are seeing their inbound strategy mature as they come to grips with what inbound marketing and content campaigns mean regarding a larger company strategy. In other words, a few companies are getting content marketing right. One such company, PepsiCo., used a co-creation campaign to mark the annual return of family members celebrating the Chinese New Year.
They partnered with the China Women’s Development Foundation and video app MeiPei, encouraging people to submit videos of their own reunions. Celebrities helped kick off the campaign by sharing their videos, with Chinese consumers quickly following suit.
Influencers are an important part of a campaign. Steven Taylor, CMO for Hong Kong’s Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, said, “It’s not just about creating great content as a brand. You have to be collaborating with influencers to not only create content, but then also distribute that content to your audience in a much more authentic manner than you could achieve on your own.”
This critical celebrity element is likely why ad spots for popular video bloggers like Papi Jiang command multi-million dollar bids.
India Begins to Embrace LGBT Marketing
Despite a large LGBT population and a culturally-recognized third gender known as “hijras,” India’s homosexual demographic still faces stigma from both the government and society.
Trying to reverse this trend and enhance LGBT visibility, several national brands have featured gay and lesbian Indian couples in prominent ad spots. For example, clothing brand Anouk made waves last year for its heartwarming three-minute branded video dubbed “The Visit,” which featured a lesbian couple and garnered nearly three million views.
Our recent research found that the LGBT segment prefers purchasing products from companies that advertise to them. They also make their devices an important part of their lives.
Since India’s retail e-commerce market has taken off in recent years, brands should be creating messages that focus on causes that the LGBT segment cares about, especially with the population growing to 375 million Internet users, 303 million of which are mobile internet users.
The U.K. Gets Native with Marketing Trends
Native content has caught on in the U.S., but across the pond, it is practically exploding. Some £509 million was spent on native advertising in the UK in 2015, equating to 22% of all digital display expenditures.
British newspaper The Guardian stays at the forefront of the trend with its own sponsored content studio, Guardian Labs, managed by Anna Watkins. “Credibility will be paramount, and brands and publishers will need to ensure their content rings true and comes from a trusted and viable source,” said Watkins about deciding on which promotions fit within the goal of appealing to readers.
So far, Guardian Labs has produced innovative campaigns like Vodafone’s “Alternative Europe” travel guide and a sponsored app by life insurer Beagle Street designed to improve mood.
Finland Is Hit By Data Driven Disruption
The companies in Finland have long been tech savvy with technology rooted deep into the Finnish way of thinking and economic structure. Finland has one of the highest technology R&D spends per capita and a heritage of large tech focused companies the like of Nokia.
Now newly established gaming giants such as Rovio and Supercell are fueling the fast growth of a new generation of tech and marketing disruptors rejecting the old product and technology driven approaches in favor of more agile customer and data driven business models. This new ‘Generation of Disruption’ is utilizing multi-source data feeds linked to real-time performance measurement systems to form actionable customer insights for rapid and often exponential business growth.
With this heritage and momentum, it was only a matter of time before the more established companies in Finland put both marketing technology and actionable data – the fuel of marketing tech – to the center of their competitive strategies. These forward thinking Finnish companies are constructing advanced real-time ROI driven service models and audience targeting systems by utilizing data and innovative marketing technologies holistically. They don’t observe their own or external data in isolation, but rather, they blend their own, partner and 3rd party data in real-time. And most importantly, they form systems, which enable them to act, as things are happening, not after. This data driven disruption and focus on actionable insights is putting customer behavior and ROI in the driver’s seat of an ever-increasing number of Finnish companies.
Altogether, these marketing trends are not so different from the ones we see here stateside, except the context and cultural sensibilities behind them fuel subtle, nuanced differences. As marketers in the U.S. question how they can improve and innovate, they can look to thought-provoking leaders from around the globe for inspiration.