Unlocking the Future of Marketing

It is always about being different; better or faster than the competitors. But where is the uniqueness mindset? Where did brands leave their uniqueness?

Since we get up till we go to sleep we are involved with brands, and that means one thing, we are involved with marketing.

It doesn’t matter if marketing isn´t something active in your life, like maybe working on marketing, but yet it’s there and it’s often responsible for making us choose one brand over another.

But marketing even goes further, because it is in ourselves too. We choose a personal style that in some way will define us and align us within a social group.

Therefore, in some way, there is a marketing-like thought process in how we build our aims, goals, and even what we express.

Why is it that if someone would gifts us a car we would choose a Mercedes instead of a Seat? They both do the same right? They take you from a place to another, but you don’t need to be an expert to know that isn’t about that.

Some people try harder to achieve this “personal style” and adopt the values that brands present to them. That’s why, in the end, even if we aren’t all public figures we all have a “personal brand”.

And there is a curious effect that happens with this, the same as with self-made people. This is that only the successful ones use this term, but in fact, all of us are self-made in some way. We are in charge of choosing one path or another.

Much like all of us, brands use human psychology and the data they’ve been able to gather to build everything from their logos to the designs of their products and services among a thousand other things.

In other words, they build and do things around what people are saying and doing (data) and how they think their actions will be perceived and will alter the behavior of those individuals (human psychology).

And much like brands get influenced by what people are doing, people get influenced by brands. It’s like a Catch 22 in that way, but in what order does this happen?

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

So let’s explore this a bit more. All around the globe, you have people creating new products, new designs, new companies… and of course marketing strategies.

Have you heard about the Pepsi Challenge? In 1983 Pepsi launched a clever marketing ploy. It was about letting people taste two glasses of cola without knowing which one was Coke and which was Pepsi. Everyone in the commercial chooses the flavor of Pepsi instead of the biggest competitor which was CocaCola.

Now, if you google the statistic of Pepsi vs Coca-Cola… You will see that for the past 25 years, Coke has won the game of hard sales, because all of its advertising has focused on the brand first and foremost. And it’s worked great because Coke owns 17 percent of the American market for carbonated soft drinks. The next most popular choice is Diet Coke with 9.4 percent. And then Pepsi languishes in third place at 8.9 percent.

So what does this teach us about marketing and its actual influence? The Coca-Cola team knew that soda is a shared experience that’s supposed to remind you of great times. Most people don´t consume it in their homes, they consume it at a bar, with friends, at parties, whether it’s by itself or as a cocktail such as the Rum & Coke (have you think that you never “Rum and Pepsi”?).

Brands try to study a society that has been influenced by marketing and they market to it. Certainly, it’s never been easy and now one might say that it’s hard as ever. Marketing has changed a lot but at the same time, it is not changing absolutely.

Reinventing the wheel?

What we refer to as “Marketing” has always existed. Maybe not as a word but certainly as a concept. Marketing’s initial concept was about being the best, not even an option among many, but it seems like brands forgot about this a long time ago.

For the past decades, marketing strategies haven’t changed much. Maybe some new innovations came and new physiologic tricks were found. But most companies and agencies aren’t doing anything new. They are not defining the status quo, they are just rethinking it… In simpler terms, they just try to reinvent the wheel.

Of course, there has been a substantial improvement in actual techniques that are still in use such as advertisement, going from physical media to the myriad of hyper-targeted ads that we have today. We also come up with powerful creative concepts time after time in efforts to outdo whatever the competition is currently going.

But in the end, it is always the same with different concepts. Spots, ads, events, some experiential marketing… It is always about being different; better or faster than the competitors. But where is the uniqueness mindset? Where did brands, consultancies, and agencies leave their uniqueness? Maybe the focus has never been about being unique… but this is a mistake.

Brands forgot about bringing their own unique style. In the middle of all the noise, a handful of brands have worried about becoming truly unique. There is more competition than ever, and all brands are fighting for the attention of their clients. Yes, fighting.

The attention game has turned into something like Game of Thrones. It’s time for brands to leave the arms and distance themselves from the vacuum. The only way to do it is to focus on what truly matters to them, the reason they exist in the first place, the founder’s initial idea, and their future goals. And only the brands that will get this will be the ones that win the longterm game.

Calling all brands that want to become game-changers

We once asked ourselves: How we can be unique? How we can completely extricate ourselves from our market segment and show people that they can do it too?

So we launched our Marketing Innovation Labs. And by questioning the past we managed to create our future. We bring real future thinking strategies to present brands.

From our lab we help companies, from early-stage startups to Fortune 100, to find the next-gen marketing strategies that not only deliver more growth or more sales but also build a community and a fanbase instead of the client pool.

We help brands deliver a positive impact and help them connect better with the real world. As I said in the beginning we are surrounded by brands.

Therefore, to achieve these meaningful goals, we are always investigating and creating around the following concepts:

• Consumer trends
• Design and packaging trends
• Corporate Responsibility
• Futuristic and next-gen marketing
• Market and client research
• Client psychology