Viper Strategic

Marketing Futurology: Emerging Themes

Author: Neil Wilkins

Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.

Marketing Futurology, the study of the effects of emerging trends in markets, is a fascinating departure from the usual tactical, day-to-day focus that marketers endure in the workplace.

When projecting marketing thinking forward into the distant future a range of blue sky ideas come into play but it’s nowhere near an exact science and there are few if any benchmarks from which to rate your thinking.

So taking into account the views from those in the room coming from industries as diverse as avionics, consultancy, finance, telecoms, event management and retail a consistent pattern of thoughts came through loud and clear:

Segmentation
The key to focusing future thinking by establishing a clear process of always remembering the end user of products and services

Prioritisation
Get it right and the future is manageable, measurable and potentially profitable at the same time as focusing resource into where it really matters

People Communicating
Innovation should enhance the ever increasing ease by which people are communicating, anywhere, anytime and by any means

Consumer Power and Personalisation
Looking forward the ultimate segmentation from a consumer’s perspective is 1-2-1. Totally bespoke services for each and every consumer

Blurring of Virtual and Real Worlds
Current social networking is the tip of an exciting iceberg with in the future device-independent interaction anywhere, anytime by any medium to enhance human interaction on the terms of the individual

Generation Y
The future today is born of the attitudes, needs, desires and perceptions of those born since 2000.

Corporate Social Responsibility
Increasingly important in the drive towards consumer power is the corporate response to their passing on of control to the customer in the relationship.

These are just snippets of a wider debate which for the marketing futurologist can grow and grow into the future itself. The key questions to kick off the debate are:

• What keeps us where we are?
• What moves us ahead?
• What’s the cost?

If as a marketer you aren’t already thinking about these issues… perhaps now is the time, because the future starts today….

- Posted on Wednesday 17 Mar 2010 at 22:06 by Neil Wilkins

Tags: communication (27), consumer power (1), corporate social responsibility (1), delegates (1), emerging themes (4), futurologist (1), futurology (4), generation y (1), graduate diploma (1), marketers (4), marketing (63), people communication (3), personalisation (4), prioritisation (1), segmentation (6), trends (4), virtual (1)