9 Trends That Will Steer Marketing in 2022

January 17, 2022

Have you thought about your company’s digital marketing strategy for 2022? Although a marketing strategy can be inclusive to your industry and target audience, there are external factors to consider when planning ahead. 

Temperature check on the consumer: Gone are the days of solely addressing pandemic realities, but building a message around practical solutions could resonate. A recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) found four times as many consumers prefer efficiency in ads versus those who value campaigns that are “fun.” In turn, brands that are able to emphasize tangible value may win out versus those that can’t make a connection between their products and creative. Campaigns at the same time must be adaptive to swings in the public mood, including through a more diverse media playbook.

Reality crashes down on the metaverse: The metaverse became inescapable in 2021, with lofty promises and platform reinventions around wedding the real world with the virtual. In 2022, brand applications will be clunky but could produce learnings for if and when the tech frontier realizes its potential.

The cookieless future is coming, but don’t expect a magic bullet: With Google delaying the phaseout of third-party cookies to 2023, the next 12 months are expected to be crucial for the industry as advertisers, ad tech providers and publishers implement new tactics that allow for tracking consumers and targeting ads.

Consumer appetite drives a wave of short-form video: Consumer appetite is pushing snappy, entertaining video as an increasingly core component of brands’ social strategy. Although Facebook continues to dominate as the world’s No. 1 social network with 2.9 billion monthly active users, marketers are shifting away from the big blue app to focus on buzzy short-form platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Small-time stars make inroads with brand deals: Like in the latter half of 2020, a convergence of pandemic-related effects shifted the role celebrities and influencers played in their 2021 brand partnerships. Influencer marketing continued to swell last year as brands tapped both big- and small-name stars, but micro-influencers are forecast to pull ahead and drive industry growth in 2022, Kantar and eMarketer predict.

As a top choice for brand collaboration due to their focused, yet small, audiences drumming up strong ROI, micro-influencers comprised 91% of engagement across all sponsored posts last year, Kantar found. That trend is set to continue into 2022 despite big name brands like McDonald’s and Burger King drawing attention to celebrity-studded collaborations.

Creative campaigns will convey brands’ soul-searching: With marketers preparing for a cookieless future, some are taking the opportunity to revisit the basics in both a tactical and creative sense. In an increasingly noisy landscape, one creative strategy is to forgo overpromising in advertisements and instead do some soul-searching to establish a marketing message that communicates a brand’s core value. “Being aggressively targeted won’t give the best response. No one wants to feel like they’re being sold to, even though realistically, we know we are,” Michael Kalli, managing director at Ello Media, said in emailed comments.

Investments in retail media, livestreaming could have different payoffs: In 2022, marketers will continue to face a new ecosystem of brand development and brand choice, as brick-and-mortar sales decline and new brands and products emerge, according to Randall Rothenberg, executive chair of the IAB. 

A benefactor of this changing landscape could be Livestream shopping. However, despite sunny forecasts and investments from major players like Walmart, livestreaming may not yield results for brands, per Phillip Jackson, chief commerce officer at customer experience agency Rightpoint.

“Brands communicating to a mass audience via a live shopping stream is not a thing that will happen in 2022,” he said, noting that the associated cost and how platforms like Instagram compensate creators for livestreams is skewing perceptions of the format.

To perhaps drive more meaningful engagement, brands are expected to embrace retail media ads in 2022, but not all investments are created equal: 47% of big brands said they’re partnering with retail media networks because they’re required to due to retailer partnerships, with only 29% of DTCs having the same requirement, per the IAB 2022 Brand Disruption Report.

Brands will continue drinking from the fountain of youth culture: In 2022, brands and agencies could continue to look at culture as a source for leadership, integration and possible M&A opportunities as marketers seek to engage consumers — especially younger generations that are increasingly difficult to reach through traditional channels.

“We’re going through a pretty significant demographic and technological shift that people have been talking about as an abstract for a long time,” said Rob Holland, CEO of consumer research platform Feedback Loop. “We’ve seen it coming like a glacier… now it’s moving into more of a tidal wave, where we’re hitting a bunch of inflection points.”

Agencies reckon with talent crisis: Talent is the biggest issue our industry is facing,” Fig’s Figliulo said. “It is forcing agencies to be more distinctive.” Attrition could be addressed in several ways. “Acqui-hiring” might become more common as the dealmaking market maintains its hot streak. Radically reimagining perks could also be necessary. Publicis Groupe is introducing a program that lets staff work from any region where the network has a footprint for up to six weeks.

Failing to promote such flexibility, including around geography, could affect recent hard-won account gains and a leg up on management consultancy disrupters that have more historical specialties in talent integration. It’s easy for agency leadership to consider talent as a large numbers game, but the health of client ties sometimes rests on the individual.

Source: Marketing Dive

The digital marketing world is constantly evolving and thrives on adaptability. Crescere Digital is here to help you navigate the industry by delivering integrated solutions based on your company’s needs and business objectives. Let’s connect and see what we can do for you!