Yes, marketing is about becoming a chameleon and changing your color (message) to meet your consumers' desires. Yes, you are listening and tracking your customers' communications to tailor your responses, but once you have the customers' input there is an urge to push out a marketing message.

A marketer who has the connection to a consumer's communications will immediately fall back to their comfort level and push, push, push out information. You may have experienced the push of marketing messages in your daily emails. Even if the consumer is cautious and reluctant to give out their email address, every consumer acquiesces and decides that giving out an email address for this product or this brand is okay. In the end, the consumer regrets the decision as they are inundated with unsolicited emails or volumes of the same exact message day-after-day.  

Consumers may also be experiencing the return of unsolicited direct mail, which keeps two industries in business, the Post Office and the Recycle Center. And then we have the growing number of unsolicited phone calls, at inappropriate times, from groups who have a work-around to distinguish their type of call from being on the "do not disturb" list.  

Thus the trend for 2015 will continue to be about pulling communications from consumers with the intention of push, push, pushing out a company's message. It is hard to change your tendencies as a marketing professional, especially when you were hired to get the message out at all costs and in any way possible, and this is heightened as many companies try to recover from years of lackluster sales.  

With respect to tactical trends:

Transparency will be important for marketing as consumers continue to exert power and influence. The brands that open their doors to what is happening to their product(s) in real time will be of the most interest to consumers.

Simplifying marketing will become the buzz word and the term, simplifying marketing, will be seen across a set of new products targeted to make the Chief Marketing Officer's life easier. In some cases you may see the title change to CSO (Chief Simplifier Officer) as they try to optimize the engagements they have with consumers as well as evaluate how it impacts the brand's value proposition.

To complement the simplification, there are discussions on moving away from just hiring people with digital marketing experience, but to finding people with a blend of marketing and technology or a Markolgists (you heard it first in Luxury Experience).  The intent is to simplify the communications across groups and ensure that the message being projected is the message that is being communicated, and that it engages the consumer.   

Other key trends that have been trending (no # needed) are a shift from global to personalized marketing, which in many ways is more of a continuation than a trend. And lastly, and something I believe in strongly, is a growing attention to internal communications across all business units. With what we see for marketing trends in 2015, i.e. breaking down barriers, simplifying communications, and looking at marketing and technology as one versus two entities, we need to ensure that the communications across all levels of a company is about making each and every employee an ambassador for the brand; every employee is an extension of the overall marketing plan.

If you would like to learn more about our services, please visit Luxury Experience Company (www.L-E-Company.com) to see how we can make a marketing difference for your company.

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© February 2015. Luxury Experience. www.LuxuryExperience.com. All rights reserved.