So I’m sure that there are lots of these sort of posts – the top lists, the best of… I know that Ciaran wrote about Top 7 lists being better than top 10s too, but this is some general thinking about what Altogether Digital will hope to achieve and drive forwards for their client work in 2008. Our advertising and marketing trends for 2008 and beyond, I guess. It’s some general thinking on the advertising and marketing trends for 2008.

Please add your own in the comments fields below – the more the merrier. The more clients that add comments, the more we can understand their own perspectives too, and that’s no bad thing!

I’ve considered which touchpoints reinforce a brand’s values; where can brands and media yield real, true engagement; how to deliver believable, personalised, authentic brand experiences.

How can alternative marketing strategies amplify your PR or Word Of Mouth scores? Appeal to your core fans and get them to do your marketing for you. Support their comments with broadcast marketing communications, certainly, but understand your core fans and appeal to them. Increased Engagement – brands engaging better with their customers will clearly increase loyalty, and therefore profitability. It’s crucial for us to meet and exceed the customers’ expectations of a brand.

Innovation and Loyalty – it’s important to identify and capitalise on what your customers are feeling, what they want, and what they themselves believe. At the same time, consider your brand’s relationship between its Behaviour and Attitude – act and believe in what you preach or watch your brand be savaged.

Surprising and Relevant Comms – related to the above, perhaps how to increase engagement. Examples below:

• Consider Proximity: go where your customers are (and not the TV set…) or give people a reason to come to you!
• Increase Exclusivity: customers are bombarded everyday by hundreds of thousands of messages. Get your customers where they’re not expecting it; so long as you do so appropriately, and deliver beyond expectation.
• Invisibility: tough one this, but brands could consider increased humility when communicating themselves. In an ad cynical world there’s a case for brands being invisible. Help improve the lives of your customers then they’ll be grateful for your brand’s involvement. Add the brand only at a level that the customer would be comfortable with and watch the engagement levels rise.
• Unpredictability is crucial too. Catching the consumer off guard can be dangerous, but if you really understand your audience and can spot opportunities it’ll be worth it. Indeed, consumers are not in categories (as much as we like to put them into them – ABC1 or 14-17 year olds) so why should our brands?

Stand For Something – brands are always chasing something… the newest “toy” or channel for them to play in… or they could become category place holders, actually standing for something in the consumers’ mind. There are very few unique brands out in the market place, so why not look to differentiate by standing for something positive. Brands need a soul, some increased authenticity.

Green Credentials – “Old Hack” I hear you cry… “don’t be so short sighted” I say. Social networking is here to stay, in one form or another… The green issue is going to be here as long as humans are, from now on. Any brand not looking to the future will suffer. If you’ve got Green Credentials, use them. If not, get some fast. Children’s number 1 concern is about the welfare of the planet. Can you really imagine that your consumers in 5 years time will buy anything that’s not at least addressing their green needs? Aim to be morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, reliably green, and nothing less!

Consumer’s Expectations Are Growing – customisation, personalisation, mobility, sharing. If the BBC is allowing you to customise your own homepage, you can be sure that others will follow.

LinkedIn will be more important than Facebook - the business sector is muscling in on Facebook and using it for contact-building. But frankly, LinkedIn will be brought to the fore in the future, for that type of connectivity. Please add me to your own LinkedIn profile – Chungaiz Khan Mumtaz. Interestingly, I think that we’ll see a bit of a Facebook death… There’s already rumours of Facebook Suicides and as the hype and phenomena slows down (there are only so many people you could have possibly met!) I believe that people will use different networks for different things. If you’re my real friend, drop me a note on Facebook and let’s share our lives together. If you’re a business contact, hit me up on LinkedIn. Simple!

The Luxury Market will continue to grow, despite fears over a recession and the impact of lending on mortgages, and separate from the hoi poloi. Expertise and Prestige will increase in brand values over the year. Longevity and quality will be more important than having the latest – that’s probably the learning that will filter to the masses.

Health is an issue that has not yet been addressed properly – alcohol and cigarettes, proper labelling, the campaign for real English on food marketing, obesity, children etc.

Mobiles and Audio Associations have not been exploited by brands yet – with mobiles in your pocket the whole time, it’s a media channel rarely looked at by branding and marketing. Mobiles are the great untapped potential – Japanese and Korean consumers are very happy with their phones as handy internet computers and portals to engage further with marcomms, but we’re a bit slower off the mark in the UK. The amount of investment that’s been put into 3G networks and iPhone type handsets by Voda/O2 etc is huge, so expect the iPhone – like the iPod – to change the way users interact with their mobiles in the UK.

Certainly there’s learning to apply (principally, not to be interruptive) but if you’re trying to connect usefully with your consumers, mobiles are great. Furthermore, they potentially offer audio as a comms strategy. Radio is still relevant, just about (apologies, RAB) but it’s evolving itself, online and off. But what about the power of Intel Inside, Snap Crackle and Pop or AOL and their audio memes?

So, how ’bout that for some random thinking?
What are your marketing trends for 2008?

Thanks to Brand Strategy and BusinessWeek for kickstarting the thoughts!

Editor’s note: The Guardian also had a piece about trends today, but any piece that describes the acronym NSFW (not safe for work) as the “latest internet abbreviation” when I’ve been using it for the best part of a decade loses a lot of its credibility.

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