Hello!

Here we are, starting another blog post. This one is a bit different though, it's going to be the last one! That is why I decided to put some extra effort on the looks of this, I know I haven't been very good doing that, maybe it's because I don't see myself as a blogger-type. Anyways, let's start with the studies!

So, last time we got to decide our own "case", and after some discussion we decided together to got with "What are the trends of future marketing?". I like the word future, especially when we're talking about something I can get geeky with. I like everything involved with new technology, smartphones, tablets and all kinds of different gadgets get my attention if they're successfully launched (unlike the Note 7)! Alright, enough of that, let's move on to the first learning objective:

What will good marketing content be made of?

Hmm. So, what will it be made of? Well, only time will tell. But if we look at current and upcoming trends, I think mobile is the dominating word for the next few years, but, there is however something that will most likely change the way we act in our everyday lives. That is, virtual reality and augmented reality or even mixed reality. Lots of different realities right? Let me open this up for you:

Virtual reality is some content that is created with computers. The idea is that virtual reality "imitates" real life and creates environments that one can feel they are present in. These realities can consist sounds, images and other triggers for the human mind. Virtual reality can be taken further by adding extra equipment as in the picture seen on right. The man is wearing virtual reality glasses, has a gun in his hands that's connected to the device streaming the game to his glasses. He's also plugged in a platform that lets him actually move around in the virtual surrounding he is in. Cool, huh?


Augmented reality is something that "inserts" virtual stuff on a view, for example if you're taking a picture with your phone, with augmented reality you could add a small man walking behind you in that picture. Or a more known explanation: the Pokemon in the popular game Pokemon Go are added on the phone screen when they appear. Like on the picture on right.


And finally, mixed reality. Mixed reality combines virtual and augmented reality and creates something very interesting, at least for me. Microsoft is already working on a device called "Hololens", it has released a developer kit that can be bought by anyone. Below you can see a interesting video demoing the works of mixed reality.

So, I haven't really talked about what will good marketing material be made of but in the future it will for sure be in these before mentioned realities. Mobile marketing will keep rising and evolving as well. We can see already now ads that take advantage of daily routines, location services etc. and combines them.Also, Facebook recently announced the change of WhatsApp's license agreement. It got a lot of attention because of the intentions of this change: in the future Facebook would be able to get information from both your WhatsApp and Facebook accounts and combine them to get more extensive marketing information of you.



But what I think is that, good marketing content will be made of more and more personalized messages to the target audience. With the help of cookies, location services, likes, buying behavior etc. companies can accurately put personalized messages to one single man using his phone. Moreover, those ads will be presented to him in a way that he doesn't even realize he's being advertised to.

Marketing agencies have been coming up with very creative ways of marketing, with the multiple channels available these days, integrated marketing makes sure people are constantly reminded about that campaign.

According to Daniel Newman, users are looking for transparency from brands. This means that genuine brands are the ones winning. He notes that user generated content will be growing, that meaning, blogs, user made reviews etc. will be playing an important role and "content co-creation" with consumers will start rising.

Newman notes that brands will start own their audiences, creating communities and from there people will start "worshiping" a specific brand and proudly wear for example clothing with that company's logo in it. That will be free marketing for the companies. Finally, he states that in the future there will be new analytical tools that give more accurate information of the users.

Fastcocreate interviewed innovators from large successful companies from this years "Most Innovative Companies in Advertising/Marketing" list. I picked up some interesting points I didn't yet cover in this blog post and will list them below:
- Connected everything, soon all our devices will be connected to each other and will create huge potential for future marketing campaigns
- Big Data
- Mobile data in the developing world

I guess that's all for now! I want to thank you everyone for an interesting course and discussion during our PBL sessions!