Trends In Advertising, Design, Marketing and Communications

Hi all -

Recently the Advertising Association of Baltimore, of which I am a board member, asked me and a group of other Baltimore-area ad agencies and design firms to discuss industry trends that we see emerging as we move into 2008. So I did some thinking and here’s what I came up with:

We’re seeing smarter, more discriminating consumers

Throughout 2007 and into 2008, we’ve noticed that consumers continue to become smarter and more discerning than ever before when it comes to advertising and marketing. This change in consumer behavior has led to us marketers having to change our focus and adapt our normal way of thinking.

But how did this change happen? It’s no secret that we consumers live in an over-communicated society. It continues to get worse and worse every year with marketers turning to new technologies and techniques like placing ads on cell phones, digital signage in unsuspecting places like at a restroom urinal and even stamping logos onto fresh produce at the supermarket. We’ve even read about groups that plan to launch technology that will help companies place ads in outer space that will be visible from Earth.

But consumers are becoming hip to what’s going on. They more and more reject these forms of disruptive advertising, and have become much more skeptical of advertisers. In a sense they’ve digested so much advertising that they’ve become professional ad critics. They can spot both a good and bad ad from a mile away and they have begun to become less tolerant of companies that don’t have polished communication.

This has led us as marketers to shift our focus a bit less on tactics and more on the emotional appeal of the brand from the inside out. For instance, we’re doing a lot more work than ever developing stronger brands and marketing them internally to a company’s employees-in a sense creating brand ambassadors that can instill the brand organically on customers (this relates back to what Ryan wrote about a brand’s engagement with the consumer).

For external marketing, great ideas are still important but execution has become key. Our clients are looking for work that leaves their consumers with a good feeling (and associate this feeling with their brand) on an emotional level rather than work that screams about a specific promotion. The consumers tend to ignore the screaming (Think Donahoo Motors…). Simplicity in message and design has increased in importance as well, with busy consumers simply not having the time to devote to comprehending advertising.

Creating a well-executed and approachable brand (both in message and design) that consumers can relate to quickly is paramount. If we can build a brand that relates positively to a consumer from the instant they interact with it, we can help these companies better connect with their consumer on an ongoing basis rather than turn them off with a flood of poorly done disruptive advertising. They expect this more and more these days, and can tell when a company hasn’t put effort into their marketing program.

Garret Ohm
www.orange-element.com

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 6:58 pm. It is filed under Blog Posts and tagged with Thoughts & Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.