TO: Drew Martin

FROM: Andrew Bayang

DATE: 25 January, 2016
RE: Molly Soat, Marketing News. 12 Industry Leaders Insights on Advertising in 2016.
American Marketing Association, 2016.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This article focuses on 12 individuals and their views on the future of advertising.
They are currently in positions that allow them to exert considerable influence over how
their respective companies approach marketing. All of them discuss how they think
consumers want to be approached which fits nicely into the class discussion on the how
marketing strategies have evolved into different eras over the last century.
Although the group had differing opinions on future advertising trends, they all
agree that content that tells a story consumers can relate to will prevail over hard sell
advertising. They only differ in how this content should be delivered.

Eric Lee, the

Managing Director and Partner of Anomaly Shanghai, believes that e-commerce will
evolve far beyond just adding a product to your online shopping cart and checking out.
His vision involves branded websites with content that emphasizes everything a product
has to offer aside from the product itself, making the purchase of that product an
experience instead of a chore. Tom Bernardin, Chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett
summed it up by saying, Consumers are hungry for fascinating stories, beautifully told.
Some of the executives focus on allowing consumers to dictate the creative
direction of advertising content. Social media has unintentionally allowed audiences to
significantly increase the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing. Colin Drummond,

Marketing Strategy Executive of Deutsch LA, argues that instead of thinking of new
ways to market to consumers, companies should instead sit back and build strategies
around the content consumers are using to market to themselves.
There are others that believe in creating content that emphasizes relevant
connections between a product and consumers everyday lives without any attempt to
sell a product. The strategy is to plant a seed in peoples minds so when the time does
arrive to fulfill a specific need, they will immediately remember the connection with a
certain product. According to Jonathan Cude, Chief Creative Officer of McKinney, the
trick is to establish compelling, emotional connections with the consumer so that when
theyre ready to buy, their brand will be tucked warmly in the consumers synapses and
rise to consideration at the right time. James Fox, CEO of Red Peak Branding, sees
more brands creating platforms which act as a destination for their consumers to gather
around a shared point of interest, such as GoPro. He calls this pull-marketing.
In general, people dont like knowing they are doing something because they are
told to do so. Consumers tend to be turned off by advertising that pushes them to buy
something and they push back by fast-forwarding though commercials. The strategy of
content advertising as described here benefits companies because it allows the
consumers to feel in control, making them more open to future patronage.

References

Soat, M. (n.d.). 12 Industry Leaders' Insights on Advertising in 2016. Retrieved January

26, 2016, from https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/
advertising-predictions-experts-2016.aspx