Marketing in 2013

What does the future hold for marketers?

The season for highlighting consumer trends for 2012 has come to a close.   Firms like JWT Intelligence, Trendwatching and Global Trends identified a number of trends that can be summarized as follows...

• Technology will be used to do anything, anywhere at any time - with shopping and knowing leading the list of personalized tasks.
• Social connections, both known and unknown, will be leveraged to make decisions or get help- from opinions to content to money.
• The choice to interact with a brand will be based on our values or well being, e.g. green or organic. At a minimum our expectation is that the senses will be stimulated.

So, what does this suggest for marketing?  Some thoughts:

• If an organization isn't buzzing with activity and doesn't look somewhat frenetic then it is going too slow.   The number of options in the 'unknown unknown' category is simply too large to try to sort it all out before executing. 
• Share of wallet results from providing a frictionless, enjoyable experience worth talking about.  This requires leadership from marketing generalists with a strong understanding of technology, not subject matter experts or [adjective] marketers.
• Purpose trumps offers.  We need brand marketers to provide the guidelines required to keep from falling into the short term realm of exaggeration. 

Time to create a 'just do it' budget.