2020 Marketing Will Require 2020 Visions of CMO Role, TikTok, Amazon, CCPA

Originally posted on Target Marketing, written by Heather Fletcher.

When brand leaders envision 2020 marketing, their main efforts will need to be on keeping their minds from exploding. From there, they’ll need to decide whether their attitudes are ones of seeing limitless, exciting opportunities — or never-ending, daunting challenges. Because for the most part, 2020 marketing will be about which brands have the best vision. Brands with vision will be taking the long-term view on their marketing strategy. That’s because with so many new marketing platforms, emerging martech, data privacy laws, and even changes to or elimination of the CMO role, not having a long-term vision for the brand could be overwhelming to the point of inaction or scattershot approaches by marketers. “Many marketers today are so focused on tactical optimizations designed to drive ‘quick wins’ for their business that they’ve lost sight of the importance of brand building,” says Lana Busignani, EVP, U.S. Analytics for Nielsen. “While modern measurement approaches have helped marketers meet the demands for greater accountability and transparency, it’s led them to place too much emphasis on short-term outcomes. In 2020, I predict we’ll see marketers trying to strike a better balance between top-of-funnel awareness efforts and bottom-funnel direct response tactics. We’ll see more marketers embrace a comprehensive, full-funnel approach that builds stronger connections with consumers and optimizes returns in the short run, while also improving brand health in the long run.” For instance, Nike ditched Amazon in order to sell directly to consumers, which values a long-term customer relationship over short-term sales, opines Maria Haggerty, CEO and one of the original founders of Dotcom Distribution, a provider of B2C and B2B fulfillment and distribution services. She notes that directly marketing to consumers allows brands to gain first-party customer data, to own the customer journey, and to have more control over their profits. What Haggerty says about Nike booting Amazon ends up revealing an overall marketing strategy that is more visionary than one third-party e-commerce option. It’s indicative of what just about every marketing thought leader told Target Marketing would be important in 2020. Joel Davis, co-founder of Mighty Social, even suggests looking beyond 2020 to 2021. In his case, Davis is looking at the number of social media platforms to come and go during the past two years. His site’s blog, again, emphasizes long-term vision:

“In order for a new social media platform to succeed, two things must happen. First, the purpose of the platform must be established; and second, the platform needs to target a specific community.”

Similarly, long-term brand visions include marketing strategies that align with business goals, brand purpose, and relevant audiences. Maybe the shiny new object is the perfect fit. Maybe it’s not. And that brings us to the first trend.

Marketers Need to Continue to Hire Outside of Their Comfort Zone (Don’t Be Peloton)

Even though I’m female and a gym rat, I may not be the target audience for Peloton. That’s OK. But the overall takeaway here is don’t hire people who will just agree with you, go along with whatever you want, and come from the same background (and gender?) as you do. Hire marketers who understand your target audience. Because it doesn’t appear as though Peloton did so. The marketer of the indoor exercise bike with live streaming fitness classes is getting major blowback about its commercial with a thin woman gifted a Peloton by … her spouse? (I thought he was some first-degree male relative.)

Markets Insider wrote this on Friday:

“Peloton’s stock plunged 15% in three days this week, wiping more than $1.5 billion from its market capitalization. “The connected-fitness startup is weathering a social-media backlash over a recent holiday advertisement. ‘The Gift That Gives Back’ features a young woman receiving a Peloton bike for Christmas and then filming herself exercising on it over the next year. “The ad, which has racked up more than 4 million views and 15,000 dislikes on YouTube, has been widely panned as sexist, tone-deaf, and dystopian.”

It even spurred a parody video that went viral (NSFW):

when my husband gets me a Peleton for Christmas ........ pic.twitter.com/Z2d3ewMhPu
— Eva Victor (@evavictor) December 2, 2019

And now from Ryan Reynolds:

The CMO Role Is Still Evolving

Organizations are finally breaking down silos. So much so, say Mary Pat Donnellon, CRO at CallRail; and Mari-Anne Kehler, Partner, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for Green Hasson Janks, that some companies are doing away with the title, altogether. Still more aligned opinions arrived to Target Marketing, such as that from Full Circle Insights, which saw the CMO role as reinvented. Donnellon says:

“The biggest shift in the role of the CMO during my career has been the move from focusing mainly on acquiring new customers, to focusing on the full buyer and customer lifecycle. CMOs today are responsible for creating amazing experiences at every stage of this journey.”

She and Target Marketing blogger Chet Dalzell also agree that CMOs, or whatever their expanded roles necessitate their titles must be, need to be data-driven. Dalzell says:

“Marketing today and tomorrow is not marketing yesterday. If marketing leadership does not recognize and understand data’s contribution to ad measurement, attribution, and business-objective ROI, then it’s time for a new generation to lead and succeed. Marketing today is spelled with a D: Data-Driven.”

Walled Gardens vs. Proprietary Sites Speaking of data, Haggerty says walled gardens like Amazon keep customer data when they sell a brand’s products. Nike wrested that back by moving sales back to direct customer relationships. But Amazon isn’t the only third party keeping customer data — Google, Facebook, and others add more and more methods to do the same. For instance, Facebook and its image-heavy social platform, Instagram, are hiding likes — which removes data from marketers and even impacts content marketers, like influencers. While B2B marketers need to improve their proprietary sites’ customer experiences, there are immediate advantages for long-term thinkers who work to keep conversions on their sites. Primarily, they’ll have first-party data from their customers. As Jennifer Saibil of The Motley Fool puts it in her article published by USA Today:

“Why Amazon Doesn’t Matter: With third-party sellers reportedly accounting for 60% of Amazon sales, the online retail leader has become a huge, difficult-to-regulate marketplace, where it’s not always clear who the seller is, whether its sales are authorized, and even if the merchandise is genuine.”

Having this opt-in customer data via a proprietary site will matter even more in 2020 because of the subhead below. But also because digital channels are increasingly popular channels with brand audiences. Episerver research shows 72% of B2B marketers expect that by 2025, most revenue will come from their e-commerce websites. Dalzell cited a forecast that digital media spend — display, digital video, social, email, digital radio, digital out-of-home, and search — would reach 60% of offline media spend in 2019.

California Consumer Privacy Act

Happy New Year! Comply with the CCPA. First-party data will be a huge advantage for brands in less than a month. So brands with opt-ins from Californians who want to receive their marketing will have an easier time of complying with the law. I also expect to see direct mail and print marketing increase there. The official fact sheet (Opens as a PDF) about the consumer data privacy law taking effect on Jan. 1 shows, in part, the following: The CCPA grants new rights to California consumers:

The right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold, both as to the categories and specific pieces of personal information;
The right to delete personal information held by businesses and by extension, a business’s service provider;
The right to opt-out of sale of personal information. Consumers are able to direct a business that sells personal information to stop selling that information. Children under the age of 16 must provide opt-in consent, with a parent or guardian consenting for children under 13.
The right to non-discrimination in terms of price or service when a consumer exercises a privacy right under CCPA.

Tricia Gellman CMO of Drift thinks marketers should see the CCPA as an opportunity:

“Privacy is an asset: Instead of seeing rulings like CCPA as a threat, companies should [use] it to their advantage. Companies that take that opportunity to show their customers that they believe and value transparency will provide an even better customer experience.”

How Ironic, Considering TikTok Is Now a Trend

TikTok, the social media platform that’s hugely popular with Gen Z, isn’t known as a data privacy leader — or even particularly considerate of its target audience. But it’s coming up quickly on Facebook’s 2.4 billion users with its own billion or so. This is good news for marketers who were running out of ad space on Facebook users’ News Feeds. One forecast that arrived at Target Marketing was solely about social media marketing predictions:

“In 2020, Socialbakers predicts that influencer marketing will continue to grow and that social commerce will achieve liftoff thanks, in part, to the growth of shopping-related content, experiments in VR-powered shopping experiences, and the rise of bots for customer service.

TikTok is the app to watch in 2020 — despite increased scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers who worry that TikTok could constitute a national security threat

Influencer marketing will grow, not wither, as others have predicted. In fact the beauty, fashion, e-commerce, and auto industries alone will help make influencer marketing a $10 billion industry

Social commerce will take off in 2020: With the rise of bots for customer service, social media platform cryptocurrencies, and social media darling TikTok entering the space

The time for VR/AR is coming with, among other things, experiments in VR-powered shopping experiences. For example, a Gap app helps shoppers pick the right clothing for their shape and size and even try clothes on virtually before buying

Battle for ad spend: Facebook vs. Instagram (We’re betting on Facebook — It’s a no lose proposition.)

And don’t forget social search. Storyblocks says those searches increased 139% in 2019. What do you think, marketers?