Think of your 2022 marketing strategy like this...
Despite the obvious challenges around, 2022 is going to be an exciting year to build and share your brand's true nature.
2022 is almost upon us and no doubt most marketing teams will be hard at work putting the finishing touches to their enthralling plans for 2022.
Modern brand building is hard work.
Unlike how it was just 10 years ago, great brands in 2022 need to work really hard at keeping people's interest going.
Brands and product portfolios these days need to progress, they need to be constantly evolving and maturing; in short, they need to run their course over a period of a year, very much like a complex story unfolds season-after-season.
Marketing teams need to then think of themselves, and the task at hand for the year ahead, as if they are just like the writers of a Emmy-winning TV series like Grey's Anatomy.
Television writing is the art of writing a TV show. Television is an exciting medium for writers because they get to control everything from the stories that are told to how the sets are built. TV writers develop stories, write scripts, make edits and revisions, and help determine what an episode looks like. - via
If you are going to be successful at engaging your customer audience, it's vital to look at the time ahead as a blank canvas through which you can immerse your audience in different experiences, stories, ideas, themes, product capsules and clever twists and turns.
The aim is to surprise them, delight them, keep them on their toes and always keep them guessing as too 'what's next'.
Good writing teams plan story arcs far into the future so that they can build up additional plot lines that lead audiences on a roller coaster ride for episodes at a time before 'the big reveal'. That's how they keep people tuning in to the next episode, that's how they build a successful and profitable TV brand.
I would urge you as a marketing team (even though you are obviously not exactly a television show writer) to also think of where you ultimately would like to take your fans into the future - so that you can tee up that experience effectively.
What you certainly don't want to do is marketing work that is boring, predictable or safe. In a world of endless choice, safe and boring is also very easy to ignore. If this is how you prefer to do your job, then rather step aside and let somebody with more ambition take over.
Despite the obvious challenges around, 2022 is going to be an exciting year to build and share your brand's true nature. The plummeting cost of content production and the rise of enabling digital technologies like NFTs are opening up never-see-before gateways towards making storytelling even more tangible and thrilling.
The canvas is blank and the paint that is available to you comes in an infinite number of vivid colours.
Go on - commit to making it a memorable one for everyone.
Previously:
Jonathan Cherry