Digitalization cannot be missing in times of panedmia, and sustainability and purpose are on everyone’s lips. In addition, the question arises: what has a future in marketing and communications?

Whoever asks himself these days which trends will be particularly relevant for marketing and brand communication in 2021, faces a variety of conjectures that the professional world has hardly produced so far. Of course, digitalization must not be missing, sustainability and purpose are on everyone’s lips, but otherwise one thing prevails above all: Uncertainty!

For CMOs in Europe, the topic of “digitization” remains at the top of their agenda, and closely related to CRM databases and database management in general.¹ Who’s surprised? After all, against the backdrop of the reach inflation of our mass media, the direct route to the customer continues to gain in importance. And this also applies to consumer goods marketing. Which media mix brings the best return on investment? And does one’s brand strategy still fit into a time that is increasingly shaped by the use of social media; more than half of humanity uses an average of 8.5 accounts for 144 minutes a day, and the trend continues to rise.

However, all this is of no use if the content being communicated does not “grab” people. They need to be highly informative or particularly entertaining. Preferably both! And conceived and realized to suit the respective channel (Kantar reports on this in their report Media Trends & Predictions 2021). That’s because our fractal media landscape, declining readership and viewership, and the loss of attention caused by the variety of messages that hit us every day are not only “crying out” for cross-channel campaigns using influencers and platforms. They also demand top content, interactive communication tools, and innovative radiance through the use of virtual, augmented, and cross reality, the most obvious manifestation of which could prove to be live selling in the coming months.³ In any case, this is likely to become much more important commercially than Clubhouse.

Millenials in Germany by frequency of social media use (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp) in 2019

The reach of social media is hard to top among Millenials. But it’s also already close to 60 percent among the population as a whole. That’s because more 45- to 54-year-olds have shopped online in recent months (84.3 percent) than 16- to 24-year-olds (75.7 percent).⁴

Sources:
1) Marketing trends – Tops according to European Marketing Agenda 2021 (CMO survey, Marketing Association)
2) Social Media 2021 – Trends, tips and predictions according to study by Adenion & pressrelations 2021
3) Media trends 2021 – Tops according to Kantar study “Media Trends and Predictions 2021”
4) Digital 2021 – Study by Hootsuite and We Are Social