Posts

Klaus Schwab

My trend 2019: Prototyping for communication

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

Scrum, Kanban, design thinking, prototyping and collaboration are working styles and methods that have their origins in product design and software development. In recent years, they have found their way into the development of digital platforms, products and services. Now we are experiencing how they are beginning to change the way people work across communication agencies: in the future, communication strategies and communication campaigns and measures alike will be designed and planned more and more collaboratively – including in partnership with customers – in sprints.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Andrea Malgara

My trend 2019: Addressing target audiences effectively

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

Admittedly, this trend will not only begin to emerge next year – however, in the incessant flood of information, effective and tailored targeting remains more relevant than ever for me. In order to reach customers accurately, it is no longer enough to only work with socio-demographic factors that do not take human behaviour into account and are not selective. The purchase decision not only depends on age or gender, but on values that are important to a person and with which they associate a product or environment.

If you factor in these values and the resulting motives for customer actions, new possibilities arise – and this is where psychographic targeting comes in. With this method, we at Mediaplus identify the most important motives for action (power, performance and connection) and include them in media planning. This can significantly increase the advertisers’ ROI and succeeds in addressing customers in both an individual and targeted manner.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Sandra Loibl

My trend 2019: 360° organic living

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

In the past, it was enough to make your purchases in the organic shop around the corner to be considered sustainably minded by most of your acquaintances. Today, an organic lifestyle encompasses much more. Our lives are becoming 360° organic. It is not just our food that is organic or fair trade but our clothing, cosmetics and so much more. Our social thinking is becoming increasingly sustainable after such events as nuclear phase-out, the diesel scandal and Hambacher Forest. Instead of plastic bags, we bring our own cloth bags with us when we go shopping. We use apps that can automatically send emails to brands if their products are too plastic-heavy.

People are increasingly making purchasing decisions based on how sustainable brands are. However, this doesn’t just affect product design and ingredients. We as designers also have to think about sustainable packaging. As communications experts, we should not only take this into consideration in the design of a campaign and the messages we communicate, but also in the selection of locations, influencers, service providers and everything that surrounds them. If we think in this way, 360° organic, it is not only good for our planet, but also for our customers.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Klaus Weise

My trend 2019: Microsoftization

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

The established stars of the digital economy Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google have a common problem: they lose their shine. Customers, employees and the stock market alike become disenchanted. Apple’s innovative powers fades. For many years, the latest model was a must-have. Today, the internet is full of posts on topics such as ‘Why I renounce the iPhone X – and reach for the iPhone 8 Plus’. In regard to voice technology, a key area for the future, Apple’s Siri is lagging behind the competition. Today, the Apple brand primarily stands for expensive. It has changed from a love brand to a luxury label.

When it comes to Facebook, we associate it with false positives, fake accounts, data leaks, bad excuses and miserable crisis PR. The platform also has a further problem: it is becoming a senior hot-spot. For example, 70% of the over-60 silversurfer generation are on Facebook. In the 14- to 19-year-old age group, there are far fewer users; Facebook has lost its sexiness.

The streaming pioneer Netflix is also facing hard times: Disney+, Hulu, Twitch and other competitors are quickly making Netflix look old. If the ‘mouse company’ manages to take over media giant Fox Entertainment as planned and even enter the streaming business, the cards of this poker game are set for a shuffle.

Search engine giant Google’s employees are rebelling. Recently, the workforce has resigned in protest against sexism and racism in the workplace. Earlier, more than 1,000 Google employees protested plans to return to China with a censored search engine. This came after employee protests already stopped a project that involved supplying the Pentagon with artificial intelligence for the analysis of military videos. For a company that has the reputation of being one of the best employers in the world, this seemed a lot of trouble over such a small amount of time.

The fact that things have changed has been proven by a software dinosaur from the last millennium: Microsoft. For a long time, it seemed as though the soul of this software company was long gone. Genuine innovations were a scare commodity. However, under Satya Nadella, Microsoft has consistently reinvented itself. He has broken old habits, turned Microsoft around, uploaded the business to the cloud and acquired smart companies such as Skype and LinkedIn. Microsoft boss Nadalla provides a clear definition of courage. At the World Economic Forum in Davos he talked about the third world, recommended that his own government in Washington should imitate the European General Data Protection Regulation and called for international rules regarding the use of artificial intelligence. The call for regulation – a breach of taboo for corporate America.

Thus, for me, the trend of 2019 is learning from Microsoft. Courage to think completely new again; courage to completely rethink ourselves; courage to embrace a clear attitude. I think in the year 2019, Facebook, Apple and co. will follow this path and reinvent themselves.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Carmen Garcia

My trend 2019: Brands with purpose

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

In 2019, brands will look for an occasion to be associated with – an occasion that will accompany their communication activities during the whole year; like social occasions that respond to CSR plans and that their clients and followers are interested in. Social marketing is “in”, but brands shouldn’t risk falling prey to opportunism and being associated with movements just because they are a hot topic like feminism or environmentalism. If the principles of these movements aren’t in the DNA of the brand, they shouldn’t be associated with them.

Brands that represent products which strike a chord with their values will be the ones to triumph in 2019 and technology will consequently play an important role. The consumer has evolved from a simple buyer of a product to a conscious consumer, who stands up for his principles and wants to bring about change as result of his purchases.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Javier Ruiz

My trend 2019: Campaigns that our parents understand

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

When we talk about putting the consumer first, who are we thinking about? About figures from a PowerPoint presentation based on statistics and studies or about real people? No matter how hard we try, no pre-test can be as reliable as asking your mum whether she understands the campaign. If we want people to buy a certain product, there is no longer any use in explaining what makes it special or in striking a note that appeals to emotions.

We must tell them how this product will make their lives easier, speaking their language and taking real peoples’ insights into account. And since everyone is different, we will have to create a variety of messages that go much deeper than an A/B test. The automatization of messages and creativity – thanks to user data and artificial intelligence – will allow us to launch multiple creative pieces to hyper-segmented audiences, measure results and optimise processes along the way. Thus, even my mum could receive a message that is adapted to her needs and emotions. And perhaps, with a little luck, she’ll understand a little bit better what I am doing.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Jens Barczewski

My trend 2019: Linear television is not dead

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

Linear television is not dead, even if its useful life is declining. There are a variety of different approaches that make it possible to make linear television more efficient:

  •  with a more creative integration of TV and online creations, which fits in with content and platform
  • through a better return channel capability from addressable TV to really bring out its added value
  • decreasing attention spans through second-screen use can be made more efficient by shorter ad lengths and corner placements
  • by enhancing real-time TV performance measurements to more effectively link web traffic
  • including videos where there are regional differences in TV usage in order to achieve an optimal contact corridor for an integrated campaign
  • with the development of an ‘effective impact corridor’ of various moving image formats in order to supplement the classical planning with the effect factor

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Winfried Bergmann

My trend 2019: New Work? Stop Buzzwording!

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

Of the verbal gems that turned up in the communication sector in 2018, ‘new work’ was one of the shiniest. No event and no convention passed by without evoking the concept of new work and its associated agile techniques. Across the country, countless self-proclaimed prophets and sometimes shamanic change consultants heralded the end of all work days. In the new year, it will be important to stop firing off new work as a buzzword and to use the momentum of its concept instead (because it is much more than just a word) to finally get its inherent horsepower on the road.

Anyone who only understands new work as desk sharing and the Vitralisation (with which Vitra has perfectly understood the new work concept) of office landscapes is falling short; indeed, people are underestimating new work as a profitability doctrine and should urgently read Fritjof Bergmann, whose concept actually dictates that without meaningful, collaborative and responsible work, we will be able to inspire fewer and fewer colleagues and customers in the future. The decentralisation and democratisation of the nature and structure of work is a necessary and consistent response to the increasing complexity and increasing pace of work processes due to rapid digitisation across all areas of society. New work is increasingly demanded by customers, guaranteeing faster decisions and results as well as increased processor proximity rather than silo thinking. New work increases innovation strength through interdisciplinary teams as well as participatory formats, thus becoming a true business asset. Only in this way can the competitive capacity of a company in the communications industry be secured in the long term.

The prerequisite is the recognition that the introduction of agile methods places considerable demands on colleagues and executives alike with regard to role and self-understanding, organisational processes, maintaining customer relationships, designing work environments, leadership behaviour and self-discipline. This includes changing the mindset of everyone involved – from juniors to managers. For colleagues, it is a question of a shift towards more self-initiative and personal responsibility. For the management, it means a new understanding of leadership that is defined in terms of enabling and supporting.

And when there is still the awareness that new work and agile methods cannot be top-downed by a company but instead that its establishment is an organic process based on prototyping and deep understanding of different business models – that there is not just one form of new work, but infinite facets of it – then you have left the buzzwording phase behind and the question can once again be asked: which verbal gem would we prefer to keep polishing?

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Oliver Grüttemeier

My trend 2019: A hat for everyone

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

In 2019, everything is about lived flexibility. It’s about the willingness to adjust in terms of attitudes, life models, goals. Managers need to recognise that needs are becoming more fragmented, not just for customers, but for their own employees in particular. Different generations have different needs: performance-orientated remuneration or fixed salary? New work, home office or the good old assigned desk? Work-life separation and fixed structures or a preference for complete freedom?

If these questions can be answered individually, a culture of values that unites everyone can be consciously created – a culture that radiates from the inside out and creates an identification space. Only then do strong brands fulfil their main task – and bring everyone together under one roof.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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Verena Letzner

My trend 2019: Influencer Marketing – here to stay

2019 is already knocking on the door – new year, new trends. At the end of the year, we asked the Serviceplan Group experts about their personal trends for 2019. What’s coming next alongside influencer marketing, new work and sustainability? The communication professionals give their verdict here. Happy reading!

Influencer marketing is (finally) starting to take off: the measurement of the contribution made by bloggers, instagrammers and the like to advertising impact, as well as an efficiency analysis of their actions as part of an integrated communication complex are just as important as the creative, individual and target group-oriented implementation of a brand message. Slowly but surely, high-quality advertising is emerging from the hype surrounding influencers.

More and more companies and brands are interested in working with bloggers, vloggers and social media stars, big and small. In doing so, they seek to achieve authentic marketing of their products and services, increased engagement with their brand or the achievement of a new target group that is difficult to access with traditional media.
All of this can and must be done by influencer marketing – however, for companies entering the field, measuring the impact on business-relevant goals such as increasing product or service awareness or selling remains a challenge. Therefore – to reduce complexity – often only the range (which is also equated with the number of followers on the respective channel) is used as the most important metric for measuring performance.

But where does this simplification come from? In my opinion, it comes from an attempt to put influencer marketing on the same level as traditional media bookings. We juggle CPCs, CPMs, and CPOs, forgetting that influencer marketing can be so much more: it is a matter of working with people who are enthusiastic about their brand and want to bring it closer to their followers – for a fee, of course; however, influencers provide their loyal, laboriously acquired fan base for the advertising activities of a company and create self-directed content for it, which is usually even provided to the brands for further use.

Precisely these elements should be thrown into the balance when making future evaluations of influencer marketing – and from these considerations comes the biggest short-term trend of this discipline: the professionalisation of influencer marketing with a focus on efficiency and impact measurement in comparison with other media formats and channels.

By leveraging tools from qualitative and quantitative advertising impact research, the use of equivalence studies and various technical platforms and tools that predict media-relevant KPIs, such as reach, impression, or engagement, based on the budget forecast, we are working on an integrated evaluation of influencer marketing projects. Only in this way the ‘influencer marketing’ trend can become a discipline that is indispensable to the advertising landscape of the future.

 

This article is part of the Trends 2019 series of the Serviceplan Group.

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