It Is The Worst Of Times, It Is The Best of Times (Part 1 of 2)

It’s been another crazy year at Oxford Road’s headquarters in Sherman Oaks – or should we say the US? Or, heck, civilization? If the ancient Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times” is a real thing, well this is perhaps about as ‘interesting’ as it gets. Reality continues to be, let’s say, challenging in many ways, with what we like to call “the largest social and human experiment in history” still going on after 18 months, so it’s perhaps not surprising that some companies have decided the way forward for us humans might be to simply avoid this unpleasant reality in the future – and hang out in another one instead. Might not be a bad bet!

There are a lot of things going on for marketers to keep track of, as ever, and today we’re summarizing what we believe to be some of the fundamental, key trends for 2022 that are happening both in response to the pandemic and its management, and also independently, that will meaningfully shift the ways marketers should behave in the coming year.

1.)   Environment Is FINALLY At The Forefront

Let’s start with perhaps the only issue bigger than the pandemic: the Earth’s rising temperature. Even if Glasgow didn’t get quite as far as everyone would have liked, it was unprecedented progress indicating that the nations’ leaders are (horribly belatedly) starting to take this issue seriously. That has sharpened the focus on hitting environmental goals across all countries, which inevitably trickles down to business leaders, and then finally to marketers. Most importantly, investors are increasingly sold on one idea: profit-only investing is starting to look increasingly unattractive, and customers are starting to demand more action.

Marketers need to pay attention and give this appropriate focus. Much of marketers’ ability to contribute lies outside traditional advertising and media (think design, manufacturing, innovation, packaging, etc.) But that said, there are many things we can do. Even sending an email costs a gram of carbon – not a big deal, of course, until you multiply that by the 60 billion spam emails sent per year in the U.S., meaning that American spam alone emits 60,000 tons of CO2. Further, the carbon footprint of internet use is about the same as the airline industry. So please look more deeply at your digital efforts, trim, tighten, and improve where you can, and then celebrate these gains with your customers. They will increasingly appreciate and love you for it. Try to follow in the footsteps of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce, Etsy, Google, and many more, who have committed to 100% renewable energy, with Microsoft notably committing to being carbon negative by 2030.

Of course, much can be done creatively, too. For example, simply reframing product features can go very far in cutting through to where it counts. ‘Buy Better, Wear Longer’ from denim brand Levi’s, encouraged people to invest in, then maintain, quality clothing for longer. Applying behavioral economics, dishwasher detergent Finish urged people to save water by not pre-rinsing dishes – a ‘green nudge’ helping consumers overcome widespread confusion about what eco-friendly actions to take.

The truth is, it’s going to be a long, hard road, with big commitments taking real focus, time, and commitment to work through. But the times they are a ‘changing, and brands are gearing up and seemingly finally ready to do what needs to be done. There’s a huge opportunity to resonate with customers and prospects here. Don’t miss it.

2. Re-Calibrating Our Lives Post-Lockdown

Having accepted confinement, consumers have become more connected to their homes, investing more in home design and improvements, and cooking more at home. Paradoxically, these are driving the desire to spend more time there, with hybrid working making it more possible than ever (but – marketer bias alert – only for the higher income minority). It’s not just the individual home, though: a third of consumers who returned to work are spending more in their local area than they were before lockdown. This represents a meaningful opportunity for brands to engage in ways that leverage the power of local connections. People are also making fewer shopping trips but spending more per trip. Given this, clients might want to be thinking more deeply about product, positioning, price, and price anchoring. Prospects may have a larger disposable wad in their pocket when they’re shopping. Still, consumers are wary of economic uncertainty and many are spending cautiously where discretion is possible.

Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly given people’s pandemic-related loss and the isolation they’ve endured, over 50% of people are re-thinking their personal purpose. As per the above,  local and regional issues are expected to gain in importance for customers, underscoring the opportunity here for marketers. Doing the right thing for the community matters more now than ever before; research from GWI found a brand’s support for people during the pandemic ranked higher than affordable price and product quality among consumers. Support of social (and of course environmental) causes are going to be increasingly important. If your brand is not (being seen to be) doing the right thing – time to step it up. People want and demand more purpose, more integrity, more mutuality.

Much of the other pandemic-related response you likely already know about: an increased focus on Health & Wellness, with noted growth specifically in hybrid (digital/real) healthcare, digital use, and adoption acceleration, increased eCommerce, a greater diversity of online comfort and capability among different demographic groups (particularly older audiences.) Mastercard estimates that from 1 in 7 dollars being spent online in 2019, we moved to 1 in 5 in 2020. Bottom line: the lockdowns have caused significant shifts in mindsets and behavior, many of which won’t go away. We need to be consistently on top of these trends and adjust our strategies accordingly.

3.  Attribution Grows Up

Quantifying and itemizing the impact of marketing investment has always been a notoriously tricky business. That’s why people didn’t do it – outside of direct marketing – until the ‘80s! Instead, they focused on making commercials that would sell. If they did a good job, people knew</a>; if not, well, it was part of the fog of doing business that the money was spent and it was… probably helping. (50+ years of single-source research now confirm this is in fact the case).

The problem with the clickable ‘banner ad’ was that it created things (clicks) you could easily measure. But as we are slowly, or some quickly, learning: “Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that actually matters can be counted.”  Running at high speed round the office relaying the number of clicks (or later, ‘Facebook likes’) without pausing to ask how many dollars these things were worth has been in vogue among marketing & agency managers for 15-25 years. Now, we might be beginning to see a shift to a more mature view of evaluating marketing effectiveness.

Part of this shift is due, of course, to the shifting data landscape. With Chrome third-party cookies set to be retired by 2023 (um, if they don’t delay by another couple of years) user-level data will be significantly reduced. Couple that with Apple’s opt-in rather than opt-out app tracking, and the future for digital tracking as we’ve known it looks bleak. Nielsen’s embarrassing loss of MRC accreditation further points to a future with a more balanced fusion of traditional and digital approaches to data collection, collation, and use. Heck, even Google and Facebook are encouraging marketers to use modeling more and rely on traditional digital metrics less!

The other part is about moving with increasing conviction away from silo-based measurement, particularly with a growing body of data highlighting how exposure to multiple channels can lead to significantly better results. More advanced models can also better reflect the growing understanding of how marketing works to influence sales both in the present and in the future. HBR, Sir Martin Sorrell, and Binet & Field are just a few of the distinguished names advocating for the importance of a more balanced approach to marketing to drive better returns for its stakeholders.

MTA has been a key solution, particularly for digital marketers, to avoid a siloed approach, but we have seen mixed results with it, at best, and – as with so many technologies – the early promise seems to have subsided into a more modest semi-optimism about what it’s providing. Third-Party cookie deprecation will only further undermine the tech.

Using brand lift studies is still the most common measurement approach by marketers, with 46% expecting to use them in 2022, but interestingly MMMs are now in second place at 42%, according to research by the World Advertising Research Center. Using omnichannel approaches like this empowers marketers to better capture cross-channel effects and more fully understand channels’ total contributions.

It’s also interesting to note, finally, marketers’ increasing focus on penetration as a key metric, reflecting the increasing infiltration of Sharp’s essential observations into the mindset of the modern marketer. ROI, unfortunately, remains a top goal for 50% of marketers, reflecting an ongoing lack of understanding of how marketing goals drive results, and how its impact can be maximized.