Written by Anne Gorgy
Featured image by Anne Gorgy
Exposed
During my first week with Pixel Dreams, my colleague and I were given two tickets to The Art Of Marketing conference. It took place at the Metro Convention Center in Toronto on June 14th. As a designer and strategist, there were a lot of compelling themes that caught my attention and that I can relate to. I was surprised to learn that current market trends are disrupting all professions and affecting the way we all do business. To our advantage, it is merging our expertise instead of parallelly aligning them.
Image courtesy of Tec Canada
Compelling
There are three themes stood out to me the most throughout the conference. The engagement economy, authenticity, and cognitive technologies. The Internet has enabled people to become more knowledgeable and more connected than ever before. Customers expect to be more engaged with brands and take part in each phase of the process. That has been apparent in many ways:
- Customers wanting to add and create value with brands. To know what they can make together.
- Customers getting involved with genuine brands they can trust. Brands that allow them to challenge their aspirations.
- Customers growing with brands and acquiring status together.
In the engagement economy, people no longer desire polished products to be passively marketed and sold to them. Instead, they want to be through the thick and thin of the process with brands. To have a user-brand relationship that is based on collaboration, transparency, and trust.
This becomes translated into real authentic experiences and brands owning rather than renting audience. Death to demographics! People and brands have become linked by a match in intent and behaviour. Brands should be constantly asking how to entertain and inform customers, and provide them with utility. Authentic experiences capture the essence of what makes us human, and our consistent search to find meaning and purpose in every moment. That’s why current successful brands are the ones that have been able to craft personalized and unique experiences that customers identify with.
Digital platforms have been providing customers with a taste of personalized experiences for quite some time now, which will be further amplified through the Internet of Things and the development of cognitive technologies. Products and services that can predict what you need and desire, and are marketed and made available to you before you even realize it. With expectations around customer service skyrocketing, brands don’t want to miss customers during moments of need. It is then the role of brands to leverage the capabilities of emerging technologies to influence customer journeys and provide instant value.
Humanize
We may speak different languages in our professions or daily life. We may come from various backgrounds or age groups. Or we may be employing technologies in different ways or fields. All of that is no longer relevant. We are in an era where everyone is going back to basics. Human language and expectations. To humanize technologies, and tell our stories that are raw and imperfect, but authentic.