Marketing’s Next Big Thing
What do I think is the trend that will play out to be the Next Big Thing in marketing? No, it’s not Web 2.0. And it’s not experiential marketing. It’s not even social media. I think that the “trend” to watch is marketing strategists’ endless search for the Next Big Thing.
With the exception of perhaps the still-continuing evolution of direct mail, it seems to me that marketers’ favorite trend is What Works Today. In other words, some company does something cool that drives exceptional results, everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and adopts that tactic for their own – often without first testing to determine how appropriate it is for their business – and then overuses it to the point that it quickly loses its impact (or fails at it because it wasn’t right for them in the first place), all the while watching for the newest Next Big Thing. It kind of reminds me of a commitment-phobic person who endlessly dates new people because the next person may just have that one better something than the previous person.
Seriously, though, I do think it’s imperative to always be looking forward to discovering the Next Big Thing – especially if you can do it before your competition. But I also think there’s nothing wrong with taking the time to find the truly right marketing mix for your specific company/product/service and mastering it in a way that no competitor can copy.
In today’s issue of The Marketing Xfactor we discuss such topics as the 2008 presidential candidate’s use of branding and marketer’s strange new desire to version the Web (anyone ready for Web 4.0?) – and how they could impact the overall marketing landscape. What do you think is the trend that will transform into marketing’s Next Big Thing?
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