We’re already a full month into the new year, so it’s about time to have look what the future of marketing might look like in 2020. With major technological developments and more data than ever – 90 percent of the world’s data has been produced in the last two years – we’re in for a wild ride of unprecedented technological innovations. Despite the many technological innovations, an “old” topic is back in action – Human connection.

Deloitte interviewed 80 experts across the globe and crystallized seven main trends to look out for in this year and beyond. The central topic of refocusing on the human, continues through it all and puts humans at the forefront of our digital environment. We’ve picked two trends to look closer at and find out what we can do.

• Human experience

As the study states “Despite efforts to replicate human behavior and gestures through automation and AI, the essentials of human connection – eye contact, personal touch, empathy – remain irreplaceable by technology.” This lack of connection can lead to something called “experience debt”. To solve this, businesses need to address the unmet human need for connection by aligning customers, the workforce and partners to a common purpose. One part of this is to design your product with empathy and your customer in mind. Designing with empathy for the human experience means understanding how your stakeholders find meaning and belonging in products and services. To get this right in future marketing activities we must know the values of the humans we hope to serve, be wary of solutions that could add to long-term experience dept and effectively message the values the brand holds sacred.

• Trust

In the last 100 years the public elevated trust as a primary determinant of how they assess brands. Everyone from customers to regulators and the media expect brands to be honest and consistent across all aspects of their business. Marketers must act as trusted steward of customer information. Which means they need to access and use customer data in a manner that maintains and builds trust. Deloitte polled 4000 global consumers to better understand customers sentiment toward corporate data usage. 53% said that they would never use a company’s product if their data is sold for profit and 40% believe that none of an organizations profits should be derived from selling data. Many customers feel vulnerable to how companies have deployed their personal information. This doesn’t mean all data usage is negative! A study stated that 86 % of customers indicated they would be more likely to trust companies with their information if they explained how it provides for a better customer experience. Companies should rather choose their data usages in a thoughtful manner that builds trust. With new regulations like GDPR in Europe, brands have an opportunity to review their consumer data process. If data is acquired from second- and third-party vendors, it can be difficult to understand how that data was collected and if the customers had given consent for this collection.

You too can be at the forefront of building human connections. Wagawin LivingAds are a simple and effective way of letting your customer talk to you whilst providing an experience that’s beneficial for the consumer. If you want to learn how more about our mobile advertisement formats and how you can collect data with LivingAds visit us at www.wagawin.com

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