The world is changing at a rapid pace. What seemed a certainty a few years ago might be in doubt now. Who would have thought that the banking industry would be under serious threat from fintech start-ups? Who would have believed that large and historic department stores would be succumbing to the pressures of online shopping behemoths? The taxi industry has forever been changed by ride-hailing services, and the hotel industry is forced to keep up with the times due to pressures from a democratised short stay or rental sector. People are keeping a close eye on how younger generations are changing the expectancy of certain life events and purchases, such as buying a car, house and have children. It feels like everything has been predictable for so many years with everything put in turmoil the last decade.
One of the most rapid changes we see is in communication. Under communication falls the way individuals interact with each other, but also how the wider world communicates with the individual. The wider world such as governmental organisations, media and private companies. We tend to have a portal to the world in our back pocket. Just a few clicks away are our family and loved ones. We tend to prefer group messaging (e.g. WhatsApp) or video-calling (e.g. Facetime and Skype video) to get in touch.
With media, we prefer to stay within our social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) to stay connected and up-to-date with the world around us. Ask yourself when the last time was when you sat down for the evening news or enjoyed a newspaper (and no, a quick 5 minutes on the metro or bus doesn’t count). We now have such a different array of ways to communicate where it used to be literally just 3 methods: phone, letter or face-to-face. It’s hard to imagine that there was a time this was seen as normal. Now we get upset if we can’t communicate with organisations through our preferred way of connecting. Think back of the last time you scoffed at the idea that a certain company didn’t have Twitter or you thought they were using it poorly. If you can remember a time you did that, then chances are it wasn’t that long ago either.
Companies are taking notice and understand they can’t reach consumers the same way they did before. One place where that is most evident is in marketing. It used to be a given that you would have a particular mix of paper, out-of-home, radio and television marketing to generate fame and sales. You knew where your end-users were and how to reach them. That’s no longer the case. The way people consume media and entertainment has completely scattered across both time and place. Entertainment might not be watching a film in the evening, but has become watching shorter clips in shorter, regimented spurts of time, such as sitting in transit. Whereas you could reach the majority of your target audience by buying a television advert slot during the middle break of a popular television show, now, also under the influence of ‘on-demand’, you will have a hard time now to get the same effect.
As of such, a traditional media buying agency is now having to share marketing budgets with a digital marketing agency, and those worlds mix poorly. Where digital marketing agencies excel in finding consumers across a complexity of channels, devices and publishers, traditional agencies still work from the media itself. There are certain beliefs and proxies the advertising industry has relied on (such as reach and frequency metrics by sampling) that are being put on extreme scrutiny because of the full measurement approach of digital media. The reason why digital marketing has taken a flight is not only because of consumers turning away from traditional media, it’s because digital marketing can be hyper directed. The idea is that the acceptance of what is good, relevant and acceptable marketing has narrowed, with people more quickly taking (digital) action to protest and complain about marketing they don’t like.
In a way, you can take the view that consumers are increasingly more influential in setting the demands on how they want to be talked to, when they want to be reached and what the quality of that communication should be. A recent phenomenon is the rise of online petitions, which illustrates this point perfectly. There isn’t a topic that someone hasn’t created a petition for. Ranging from the ridiculous to the actual serious and valid issues, it seems that people are able to get organised quickly without any pre-existing organisational framework. Compare a union strike, for example, which takes weeks or maybe even months to prepare, versus an online petition reaching hundreds of thousands of signatures with just the ‘effort’ of social shares and likes?
It’s clear, in this internet and always-on always-connected age, the consumer is really holding all the cards. The consumer sets the terms in which he or she wants to consume and communicate. And companies are taking notice. As they are trying to follow, meet and except consumer’s expectations, they are confronted with challenges that don’t fit within their traditional toolbox of solutions. The fintech start-ups are a clear example of that, even forcing traditional banks to launch fintech-esque products themselves. Traditional taxi companies are scrambling to bring out apps themselves, and every surviving department store is looking for ways to gain a foothold in the online retail space.
Even in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) world, the times are changing. Where product innovation was a ‘nice to have’ element but wasn’t really needed for the bottom-line (people will still drink coke, buy a loaf of bread regularly and use detergent for their laundry). It now seems that this has shifted as well, as consumers will buy more specific products that fit their beliefs (gluten-free, low sugar, biodegradable, etc.). And consumers will get rid of products that don’t fit with the zeitgeist, by voting with their wallets. One only needs to see how veganism is changing industries completely and realise it’s not a fad. And that’s the key, companies should expect the world to change faster and more fundamentally than ever before. Within just a matter of years, consumption patterns can shift with so much force that it can wipe out companies and even whole industries. Welcome to the brave new world.
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