CONTENT MARKETING 2029
Hello friends. Yes, I’m here to talk about the future again. Let’s start with some definitions.
Content marketing, at the core, is a simple concept. A business provides and distributes content of interest to consumers, which ultimately leads to engagement with their core product. While the term has gained lots of popularity recently, it’s actually a centuries old process — many scholars describe Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac as one of the earliest examples of content marketing, used successfully to drive business for his printing press. Today, content marketing mainly refers to online content, like blogs, white papers, social media posts, microsites, webinars, infographics and more. These elements are designed to increase brand awareness and credibility in the minds of consumers, in a refreshing way that’s enjoyable to consume and less ad-like. It works.
But just as society leapt from the printing press to the blog, another leap is surely coming. What might the next generation of content marketing look like? Without further ado, I present some bold predictions for how brands will connect with customers in the future. This is:
CONTENT MARKETING 2029
Prediction 1: Every Brand Will Need A Face
People buy products from companies, but in actuality they buy products from brands — the embodiment of a company that acts as its emotional avatar. Whether it’s to inspire trust, excitement, or confidence, brands need a persona in consumers’ minds, which is what content marketing aims to acquaint them with. With the supercharged tech of 2029, buyers will solely purchase products from their “friends,” fully developed hyper-realistic personalities that just happen to be selling something. Sound a little out there? Consider the following factors:
People are getting friendly with AI shopping
In a surprising finding chronicled in the study Talk to me: Exploring user interactions with the Amazon Alexa, researchers found:
“users reported being satisfied with Alexa even when it did not produce sought information, suggesting that the interaction experience is more important to the users than the interaction output.”
This represents a huge opportunity for content to build connection, just as these digital assistants do, with the end goal of authentically introducing products and services.
Buyers trust mascots more than other people
In the Impact of Celebrity Endorsements and Brand Mascots on Consumer Buying Behavior, when put head to head, consumers trusted mascots over other celebrity brand endorsers — especially impressive considering celebrities were found to act as statistically significant “initiators” and “influencers,” generating degrees of awareness and interest in products that even supplanted concerns about price, quality, and value.
First-attempts like Xinhua’s AI news anchor — functionally a mascot that’s also able to hijack the advantageous aspects of human celebrity — are quickly beginning to bridge the uncanny valley, demonstrating that tools to build trust with audiences en masse will be here in no time. This is a corporate mascot delivering a product as critical as 24/7 news in real time (and in multiple languages).
Your 2029 Strategy: Start to develop an understanding of the emotional cues that resonate with your consumers. It’s one thing to provide helpful information, useful products, and clever advertising. It’s another to generate an entire, believable, and trustworthy personality in real-time. Fortunately, you won’t have to do that. While the rise in chip processing speed is likely to get us to the point of AGI — Artificial General Intelligence — essentially a computer as smart as a human brain — in approximately 10–20 years, you can build the tools you need to make your AI a market leader by gathering the significant cues for your brand. These could range from a particular type of messaging vernacular, to color schemes, visual icons, sights, sounds, or more. Gathering every bit of information is overload. Find what matters now by developing an understanding of the mental space your brand occupies with customers to start building your persona, while preparing to leverage your insights for the long run. Your trusted public face will be visible in no time!
Prediction 2: Sponsored Content Will Own Streaming
Here’s a newsflash: Streaming media is losing money. While harvesting a massive trove of global consumer preferences and tricks to keep viewers watching, services are also burning cash by the fistful. Netflix is set to go another $3B into debt this year. Hulu’s going in for $1.5B, while Amazon Prime Video spends $4.5B.
Some companies, like AT&T are using their more profitable services to offset some losses, but it’s only a matter of time before streaming will need to make money. Demand for high quality entertainment isn’t dropping anytime soon, even as production costs rise. The answer will appear in the form of underwritten content.
Captain Crunch’s faux news series The Earliest Morning Show, Swedish Fish’s 80’s-inspired sitcom Treadin’ Water, and mattress company Purple’s absurdist Purple Boys are the opening acts of the big show to come in advertising. There’s a lively and detailed analysis of the trend here (in a piece by my earliest writing partner and twin brother, Malcolm).
The content is clever, plot-driven, and entertaining for casual web surfer. It’s no Game of Thrones, but breakthrough innovations often take the path of agile, test and improve, development with rapid improvements, and this is no different. It’s practically a reintroduction of the sponsored radio serial of the 1940’s and 50’s — and making meaningful inroads. Ignore it at your own peril.
Your 2029 Strategy: Master the elements of storytelling necessary to engage consumers of your brand. Sure, your brand may have a mission, but you’ll need a strong understanding of your brand’s Identity (with a capital “I”) in order to turn it into a story that resonates with consumers. For instance, The Earliest Morning Show capitalizes on Cap’n Crunch’s positioning as the brand that delivers the most fun in the morning — embracing its hammy cartoon nostalgia and blending it with the more complex humor of now adult audience. Get cracking now by making sure you understand where your brand stands, where white space exists in your industry, and its parallels for adaptation in the entertainment world.
Prediction 3: Immersive experiences will be the new ZMOT
While the First Moment of Truth or “FMOT,” occurs when a customer is standing in front of your product in a store making their decision, the “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) occurs when consumers begin to search for a product, looking through reviews and media to decide what they’re even looking for. With the advent of advanced virtual reality, 0 and 1 will merge into a single moment. I guess you could call it “Quantum Browsing”. And it’s already starting.
Augmented Reality offers users the ability to dive into novel, digitally rendered and practically tangible experiences with just the click of a headset and some sensors, and code. It’s being used in real estate for virtual walkthroughs, by IKEA to allow pre-experience of furniture, and I’d be in serious error to disregard the AR gaming sensation Pokémon Go, which still rakes in $2 million per day, by having people walk around staring at phones — more than they usually do, that is.
Soon, the way you attract consumers will be having them walk through your virtual storefront and try all your goods during the search, including elements like touch, taste and smell to have them hooked before ever leaving home. Consider it the high-tech update of the Costco sample booth, giving consumers free value to encourage purchase.
Your 2029 Strategy: Making investments in simple, augmented experiences consumers can access online or in physical storefronts can go a long way. Start off small with memorable pop-up events, and eventually integrate it with your other content strategies to maximize effectiveness.
In the meantime, I have 10 years to see how my predictions fare.
Hannibal Brooks is an Insight Associate at Olson Zaltman.
