TRENDING NORTH: DEC ‘22

Goodbye, 2022. Hello, 2023! With a new year approaching, we turned to our fellow Northies to get their predictions for 2023. We asked: “What do you foresee will be a major trend in the new year?”

Name, Title: Madelyn Engel, Performance Marketing Manager
Prediction: We’ll see a resurrection of MySpace.
Explanation: TikTok has an absolute chokehold over social users this year, with brands scrambling to keep up. But one notable difference in this “social” app, is that it was designed as an entertainment app, not as a social connector, which is why users have no problem with 99% of their content being suggested by AI rather than seeing content from users they follow. However, other apps like Facebook and Instagram are attempting to copy this suggested content model and are receiving quite a bit of pushback from users and brands alike. It is now rare to see content from your friends and family in your Instagram feed, and brands are struggling to get their posts out to their followers. This has left a void for many social users who want to stay connected with family/friends and local businesses/events. With 2000’s fashion and all things nostalgic trending, I predict a rise of a true SOCIAL app, one that gets back to the roots of connecting authentically. Bring back the (savage) top 8!

Name, Title: Stephen Lawrence, Media Planner
Prediction: The audio advertising space is going to move into more interactive ad placements.
Explanation: One of the biggest deterrents for audio advertising is the inability for placements to be engaging outside of hearing an ad in a podcast or during music streaming. I predict that the audio advertising space is going to become more dynamic in their opportunities for advertisers to include engaging, clickable placements in audio ads in the new year, by either shaking your phone to “click” on an ad, allowing voice engagement, or simply adding more engaging, clickable placements across the top audio channels.

Name, Title: Mark Ray, Co-Founder, CCO
Prediction: Virtual products will become as meaningful and indispensable as in the analog world.
Explanation: Global brands will have to rethink their entire product strategies and brand portfolios to be relevant and valuable in the coming metaverse.

Name, Title: Landie Viljoen, Channel Strategy Director
Prediction: The top 5 branding channels will be online/OTT video, social, email, partnerships, and web3.0
Explanation:

Online/OTT Video: Streaming is more popular than ever and will continue to lead in time spent online in 2023. New AVOD (Ad-Supported Video On Demand) inventory is opening up for advertisers, including the recent launch of the Netflix and Disney+ ad-supported subscription tiers. Consumers are increasingly cutting subscription costs due to a looming recession, leading to growth of ad-supported subscriptions as consumers are looking for savings within their discretionary spending. Live streams will grow in popularity with more sports, award shows, news, and other platforms transitioning from airing on linear TV to digital TV.

Social: The leading social platforms will see a change up with Meta, Twitter, Snapchap, and TikTok facing current day challenges (check out our November edition of Trending NORTH for more details). Content priorities will shift to authenticity as the priority becomes less about products and more about building relationships with customers. Social Search will become increasingly important with many consumers shifting their search behavior away from organic search. More social platforms will start to offer keyword search targeting.

Email: As advertisers prepare for the cookieless future following Apple’s 2020 iOS 14 privacy update and ahead of Google Chrome’s 2024 privacy update, email will become more important than ever. Growing email databases will help advertisers maintain quality 1:1 data targeting to allow for retargeting and lookalike modeling. Email also provides a free-ish channel for brands to connect with consumers.

Partnerships: As mentioned with social, consumers will seek greater authenticity with brand relationships in 2023. Partnerships with relevant influencers, media publishers, and brands will be valuable for building credibility, crafting relatable content, and driving sales through existing products and exclusive collections.

Web3.0: More brands will start testing Web3.0 media to better understand their positioning with digital wallets, NFTs, and the metaverse. More consumers will try out a Web3.0 medium for the first time with growing experiences driving their curiosity.

Name, Title: Blake Caudle, Art Director
Prediction: I expect to see more partnerships and opportunities for brands to advertise inside video game environments.
Explanation: Younger generations are spending more time in digital spaces and video games hold a large share of that. You’ll see brands continue to push into those spaces. Some examples: billboards in open world games, continued partnerships between artists and big franchises like Fortnite. Skins that feature apparel that can purchased in the real world. Courtside video boards. The opportunities are abundant.

Name, Title: Scrappers, Creative Worker
Prediction: Copy/Paste Creativity
Explanation: Creatives will jokingly ask AI for answers to briefs. The answers will weirdly be perfect and thoughtful, so people will get used to copying and pasting AI thinking. It will be a practice that’s as typical as using an existing image for a mock-up. This practice will be championed by those who trust the safety of focus group approval over risky creative ideas.

Name, Title: Marika Van de Kamp, Graphic Designer
Prediction: There will be a rise in handmade techniques
Explanation: With the rise of AI, we’ll also see a big push towards the opposite approach — steering away from technology and adding more handmade elements into advertising campaigns. You know, stuff people used to do before computers were a thing. Painting, working with textiles, doodling (on real paper, not a screen), more film photography, etc.

Name, Title: Rebecca M. Armstrong, CEO
Prediction: Social media will face some hard truths
Explanation: Over 500 years ago, Nostradamus predicted that there would be a “celestial fire on the royal edifice” in 2023. This could mean that it’s curtains for the House of Windsor. But maybe more plausibly people will finally face up to the fact that our social channels are NOT safe, equitable public forums — the hyperbolic town square — but, rather, businesses under the influence of owners, advertisers and in some cases governments. Yes, Kids, China is monitoring your activity on TikTok. You might want to get outside and protest in an actual town square.

Name, Title: Ashod Simonian, Creative Director
Prediction: We will see more diverse diversity
Explanation: As fears of being “canceled” rise and marginalized communities continue to grapple with senseless acts of violence, clients and creators will seek to show a more diverse diversity in their storytelling. But because it’s not enough that there’s one Black friend at the Super Bowl party in your potato chip spot or that the female lead has a quirky gay bestie, a real desire to present credible stories will push underrepresented voices to the forefront, paving the way for genuine trans rom-coms and diaper ads featuring nontraditional family structures. The smartest companies across the board will continue to diversify internally, creating an environment where all voices are valued at every step of the decision making process.

Name, Title: Laura Gibson, Writer
Prediction: Crafty Maximalism + More text on the screen
Explanation: Because so much is computer generated these days, because perfectly-curated lifestyle photos feel a bit stale, I’m guessing hand-built visual magic is going to make a comeback. Bright colors, stagecraft, mechanical effects, combined with the DIY aesthetic of the early aughts and a break-the-fourth-wall wink to the audience. Think Everything Everywhere All At Once or the music videos of Michel Gondry. We want a spectacle with a human touch. We want the quilt to be bold and bordering on chaos, but we still want to see its (hand-sewn) seams.

If you’ve watched a movie with a thirteen-year-old recently, you may have been asked to turn the captions on (more likely, they took the remote from you and did it themselves). Especially for the youngsters–often navigating multiple screens at once — text is a part of the visual experience. This is clear in TikTok and instagram reels, but I imagine this tendency will begin spilling over into other channels and we’ll see more copy on the screen, perhaps in unexpected places. For even the most compelling visuals won’t be enough motivation to turn the sound on.

Name, Title: Peter Calandra, Art Producer, Print and Art Buyer
Prediction: Less dollars will be available to spend on hiring still photographers.
Explanation: The continued proliferation of personal hi-res photography manifesting via phone and camera hardware each year reveals more and more creatives taking the task of capturing quality still assets into their own hands. Both hardware and software for photography continues to evolve into more user-friendly devices and UI with image quality only continuing to get better. This, on top of the fact that most still assets are destined only for short-term RGB usage via trends in media, convinces me that it will become even more difficult to justify hiring professional photographers for quick asset capture in both controlled studio environments as well as IRL quick outdoor lifestyle type captures, especially those captures involving a focus on product. With this evolution comes the need for creatives to continually sharpen both their composition skills and their post-production prowess.