Top 100 marketers’ priorities in 2020 Top 100 marketers’ priorities in 2020

Marketing Week asked members of our Top 100 marketers list for their views on which consumer and industry trends will set the marketing agenda in 2020

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Title of the piece

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SOURCE: SALESFORCE, 'STATE OF MARKETING 2019'

By: Morag Cuddeford-Jones

“Personalisation is key to try and get cut through.”

David Hilbert, Kia

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Unilever’s former chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed left his role before the Top 100 list was named, but has been ever-present in rankings of the world’s most influential marketers for many years. Now, as a non-executive director for companies including WPP, he sees mobile phones continuing to transform the way consumers and brands interact in 2020. Weed says: “I know [the smartphone] has been around for a while, but I still think it's got a long way to go. Of course, with a mobile you have a real-time, in-location ability to connect with people and indeed to personalise as well. Unlocking that, I think, will be the biggest opportunity still ahead of us.” A key aspect of this, he believes, is voice, which he sees as a “more human” way for brands to communicate, and with greater “fluidity”. He may have a point, if forecasts from analysts at Juniper Research are accurate. It predicts 8 billion voice assistants will be in use by 2023, up from 2.5 billion at the end of 2018 – most of them being on smartphones, for example Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. While different sectors and brands will undoubtedly have different priorities next year, there are few better sources of wisdom that the Marketing Week Top 100 for insight into what’s next for the marketing discipline as a whole. ■

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Remote collaboration

Medichecks marketing director Amanda Howard singles out the rise of collaboration tools as a transformative influence on ways of working. As a result, marketers and agencies no longer need to be in the same room to work closely together. “Through things like [Microsoft] Teams and Zoom and virtual working, I think collaboration has become that much easier, and that means that you can get the best people to work with you. They don't have to be physically based in your city or even in your country.” It’s a reality marketers need to become comfortable with, as research shows this is the clear direction of travel for working practices generally. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of people in the UK who work from home increased by 22% in the decade between 2008 and 2018 to 4.5 million.

Getting a grip on personal data

Making personalisation feel premium

Despite Wheldon’s qualms about data protection, fellow Top 100 member David Hilbert, marketing director at Kia UK, sees personalisation playing a fundamental role for marketers next year “Personalisation is key from a marketing point of view to try and get cut through,” he argues. He also believes the ability to tailor messages is key to creating differentiation from competitors, throughout the customer journey from online advertising onwards. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to indicate marketers and tech vendors see the challenge of contextual personalisation at scale as one of the next great marketing challenges. As numerous speakers at the Festival of Marketing attested, the key is to understand each consumer’s individual intent when interacting with a brand, then adapt the journeys they are able to take accordingly – all while respecting increasingly stringent data laws.

Breaking down customer silos

Achieving this ideal in personalisation requires progress in other areas first. Vivienne Francis, former marketing director of the Alzheimer’s Society and currently a consultant, says the elimination of silos is her key trend for 2020. Specifically, there is a need to ensure different parts of a business share customer data, with the aim of ensuring customer journeys and experiences take all touchpoints into account. “In some organisations you can you have a tendency for certain groups to think they own certain audiences. I think all of those internal barriers need to be let go,” she argues. The ultimate goal of this effort is to ensure consumers have the experience they want to have with a brand, thus making them more likely to keep returning.

Unlocking the potential of voice on mobile

Royal Bank of Scotland Group CMO David Wheldon points to data as a key theme once again in 2020. He is positive about the potential of technology but also counsels marketers to respect consumers’ rights. “I think, on the one hand, it’s great to see lots of technology, hypothetically, enabling all sorts of things. But on the other, we need to remember this is people’s data we’re talking about, and we’re miles off personalisation that customers will actually value and treasure because there’s way too much abuse at the moment,” he says. It’s understandable that, as a FTSE 100 company with around 19 million customers globally, RBS’s top marketer should be risk-averse where their data is concerned – especially given the fines handed out to British Airways and Marriott under GDPR in 2019. Could 2020 be the year when the Information Commissioner’s Office finally gives marketers a clearer idea of what’s acceptable and what’s not in the realms of personal data use?

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