Are you ready? Three BIG ideas to start 2024 on the right foot
It’s been a while since I wrote a blog (this is despite committing to writing one every month this year *eye roll*), but even with that said, now seemed the right time to write one as 2023 draws to a close and the dawn of 2024 is beckoning.
So, what does the New Year hold in store for us and how can we best prepare ourselves? With that question firmly in your mind, here are my three BIG ideas that I believe every marketer should keep front of mind as we move into next year.
1. Remain prominent
A new conversation that’s been getting a bit of noise this year (and is massively overdue in my opinion) is about the important role marketing specialists play in the wider growth strategy of an organisation. And specifically, holding a significant position which holds strategic power (regardless of whether it’s a small or large organisation).
And this is particularly important in the B2B industry right now.
Last week, Marketing Week published an article entitled: “B2B marketers need to reclaim the breadth of the role, or risk sliding back to irrelevance” and it was a headline that really resonated with me. The article said that “the boardroom credibility and influence gained in the last ten years by senior B2B marketing leaders is at risk as belts are tightened.”
Boardroom influence is something that I’ve experienced first-hand - that frustrating imbalance between the increasingly pressurised role of marketing and yet the individuals and teams responsible for delivering the strategy are rarely given a seat at the table.
(As the MW article outlines) the common mistake at the moment is a focus on ‘profitability rather than growth’ which could see the whole function of marketing ‘slipping merely into a comms function’. But now really is the time to be more than that.
In a recent DOAC podcast, Dragon’s Den and serial entrepreneur Steven Bartlett was joined by AirBnB founder and CEO Brian Chesky* who discussed the comparisons between his company, and that of Apple and Disney. He described how he idolised both the ethos and success of each brand and applied them to the strategy of AirBnB. He also made the fantastic point that a huge part of their success was due to them both having creative leaders, each helping them to lead the respective businesses to tremendous growth.
The fact that Steve Jobs ran a technology company but was design not technology-minded struck a real chord with me. How different would the strategies have been at the organisations I’ve worked for, if there had been a continuous thread of creativity at a strategic level? Unfortunately, this is so rarely the case. And yet both Apple and Disney are two of the most successful businesses and two businesses that have always used marketing tremendously well.
Whatever your thoughts on this, what is clear is that now is not the time to take the Etsy approach.
The online marketplace announced this month that it would be cutting 225 jobs, one of which is its long-term chief marketing officer Ryan Scott, as it consolidates its marketing function under its current COO. Scott and his teams have helped introduced literally “tens of millions” of new customers to Etsy and helped to “transform” the brand globally and yeh economic headwinds have prompted the company to streamline its operations. Say whaaat?
This is a classic example of a brand focusing on profitability rather than growth. And it’s a move that could pose a real risk to the brand in the long-run, as it suggests a focus merely on the numbers and not on the long term efficacy of the brand.
Which brings me neatly onto trend number two….
2. Don’t forget your brand
A lot of brands seem to have lost their way this year. And they have forgotten how to make an emotional connection with customers, that lasts. Storytelling is a must, but you also need to make sure it’s the right story to tell…
I’m going to use some of the 2023 Christmas campaigns to illustrate this point.
The John Lewis campaign is usually the start of the festive season for me, but I felt it really missed the mark this year. And I don’t think I was the only one who felt like this.
The sentiment of loving a prickly Venus Flytrap made me smile, but it failed to connect at a deeper level. (And this isn’t out of the realms of possibility for me – I mean, friends will remember the year when I watched Edgar the Dragon repeatedly and couldn’t get through it without welling up *googles it again*).
Now, don’t get me wrong, this year’s ad wasn’t without warmth, but it just wasn’t enough amongst a backdrop of war, economic uncertainty and increasing poverty. The use of an original song probably played a large part, but overall, the simple message of ‘Letting Your Traditions Grow’ was just told from the wrong perspective…
The kid knows no better. Every year it’s new. But, what about the Mum whose Christmas is now very different to the one she had as a child? Now, there’s a story guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye.
Amazon on the other hand, went for a simple and joyful idea taken poignantly from the point of view of someone who might feel like the good times are slipping away. The advert, if you haven’t seen it, shows three elderly ladies watching kids enjoying the slopes with their sledges. It’s clear they’re enjoying the show, but also reminiscing about the times they too have had on the slopes. And, just like that, and all within just a few clicks (on Amazon of course) the ladies can enjoy sledging again - only this time with the help of some memory foam bum cushions. Classic.
Cheesy yes. But this advert had real stand out and sentiment. It conjured up thoughts of my own Gran whose participation in Christmas has declined year after year; reluctantly putting up the tree, but who was once the person who had taken such delight in hosting the whole family and buying every type of Mr Kipling cake for our Christmas tea. That’s a memory I hadn’t thought about in a while…
But why just leave it to Christmas to use emotion to engage audiences? Brands have a real opportunity to raise their game and secure sustainable growth in 2024. Competition is fiercer than ever, so brands need to go beyond influencing behaviour and instead work hard to create that emotional connection through stories for real long-term resonance. You can’t measure the success of it on a graph, sure, but you’ll know when you get it right.**
3. Get on the AI bandwagon
Huh? That’s a bit of a curve ball, isn’t it?
Well, yes kind of. But bear with me.
Even though I don’t position myself as an AI expert I get asked a lot from clients about what role I think AI will play in marketing, and this has prompted me to do a bit of research to educate myself on what the next evolution of marketing might look like.
And here’s my take on it…
AI is here to stay. Organisations, marketing departments, individuals need to accept this. After all, burying your head in the sand is never going to end well (*cough* Blockbuster *cough*). It’s not going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean that AI is taking over the world. Far from it.
Until AI can produce comedy that makes me belly laugh like a Peter Kay sketch or until I see an amazing advertising campaign entirely created by AI, I will never believe that AI is coming to take our jobs. And nor should it. And nor should organisations be taking the lazy option to fire their content writers in favour of ChatGPT writing all their blogs.
But even with that said, my recommendation to push the marketing agenda at an Exec level, focus more on creative storytelling and to shun data-driven strategies, all takes time. And it’s time that so many over-stretched marketing teams just don’t have.
Coming full circle back to the start of this article I quoted Marketing Week which said that ‘B2B marketers need to reclaim the breadth of the role’. So, it’s a bit of a catch 22 isn’t it? By not doing everything we risk ‘sliding back into irrelevance’ yet we know that the big players next year will be those that prioritise brand and get back to creative storytelling. So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a problem, specifically - how can we create the time to do just that? And that’s the role I believe AI must play. Freeing up time completing the more mundane tasks of marketing that suck any opportunity for creative thinking and delivery.
In practice this might mean using AI to start the bones of a site map you’ve been asked to create or it might mean using AI to generate a template for an agency design brief, a tender document or quarterly report or some other time sucker activity that I can’t think of right now.
2024 is the year of efficiency. Use AI to your advantage BUT, don’t forget the bigger picture is not to cut corners - it’s to do things bigger and better than before.
*I didn’t think it would be, but it was a really good listen. Check it out here.
**And if you want to know about this topic, read this fantastic article and report by The Drum plus this awesome blog here on brand storytelling, by yours truly.