CAN I KVETCH AT YOU FOR A MOMENT? I wind up writing the CM Editor’s Note for every August issue, and there just is no point in the calendar when I am less insightful about the future. It’s mid-summer, and I’m too busy seizing the moment. I’m always full of sweet corn and local tomatoes, half-deaf from the early-summer movie blockbusters, and my sole concerns in life are finding a shady seat and a frosty beverage with which to relax while I watch the mercury climb and the Chicago Cubs fall.
But marketing never sleeps. Sellers are already elbows-deep in back-to-school campaigns and strategizing their opening gambits and end games for the coming holiday season. So it’s time to rise to the challenge, roll out of my hammock and fashion some thoughts about the trends and issues they will face in the next six months. Here they are, in no particular order:
- Price vs. brand is going to heat up again
Middle-class consumers are paying down their credit card debt and cutting back on big-ticket purchases. Nor is there evidence that they’re replacing big buys with “small indulgences”: That’s something you do to get through a temporary squeeze, but frugality is here for the long term. This offers an opportunity for some marketers to acquire new customers. But it also forces them to decide when and how to drop the “D” bomb — “discount” — and whether entering into a price war does more harm than good by eroding brand equity. Welcome to a permanent state of 2008.
- Measurement doesn’t count for everything
Yes, marketers need to have ROI top of mind and to allocate spending in part on where they can generate the most leads. But consumers are congregating in lots of places where attribution is still mushy and the buying process is hard to track: in social networks, in shopping blogs and parenting forums, watching haul videos on YouTube and on mobile devices whose browsers don’t take cookies. Marketers should be as focused on the brand-building that can happen among those hard-to-track audiences as they are on email or DM response rates.
- Social is the new CRM channel
Comcast knows this; so does JetBlue. McDonald’s believes in Twitter even after getting creamed on a few promoted tweet campaigns. On the other hand, Netflix announced the equivalent of a price increase with no discussion on Twitter, Facebook or any social media other than one post on its corporate blog. Guess who may be looking at a massive customer falloff in the next few months?
- Who decided we need 7.5-ounce cans of soft drinks?
Are these “fun-sized”? As my sister once said about tiny Halloween candy bars, “Small isn’t fun. Big is fun.”
Okay, apparently that’s all the deep thought I’ve got in me for this month. See you in September, when I’m smart again.
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