We recently submitted some trends for Advantage magazine’s 2011 trends issue. There were some slightly odd copy edits (highlighted below) in the magazine so this is what we actually said:

Consumer experience:
The rise of social media, in particular Twitter, is turning consumer experience into one of the biggest marketing tools. When consumer’s really hate or really like an experience they share it. When they come across something innovative or different during their experience they take a picture of it and tell someone. As a result companies that are either really terrible or really interesting dominate online conversations. As well as putting pressure on to fix what’s wrong within a company (a handy mail to the CEO with 50 ranting tweets about poor service might do the trick) marketers can also think how they can surprise and delight people on their consumer journey to get them talking. This is where the marketing team need to integrate not only within marketing disciplines but more fundamentally within products and services.

Earned media:
Earned media is basically a phrase ad and digital agencies have invented to describe Public Relations (which they’ve failed to really notice for about 50 years). The phrase goes beyond traditional press coverage though and is a good way of describing any media space that talks about a brand that wasn’t paid for including blogs, twitter, facebook and any other consumer created media as well as traditional editiorial coverage.

Earned media is increasingly being used to measure the success of a campaign by marketing agencies going after big awards (check out entries for Gold winners at Cannes) and means they have to start being much nicer to their PR partners.

The rebirth of the publicity stunt:
Publicity stunts are back in vogue thanks the power of the web to spread a good visual idea for free. Because of the short attention span of online users ideas are becoming increasingly arb and outrageous just to cut through the clutter. As the competition heats up amongst brands expect things to get weirder and more creative to grab attention (the Lady Gaga meat dress, T Mobile’s flash mobs and anything done by Old Spice being good examples).

The rise and rise of Facebook:
Facebook is going to dominate web marketing in the very near future. Our experience in running parallel campaign microsites and Facebook pages is that Facebook pages receive between three and ten times the traffic of the microsite. The reason being a website is basically a dark room – what happens in it nobody knows about. On Facebook if you interact with content or “Like” something your whole network potentially knows about it. That and the ability to build web pages within tabs gives Facebook Pages a massive amount of creative flexibility. They also happen to be a lot cheaper than building a microsite. Also worth mentioning that the IT departments attempt to ban it have failed miserably (just wander round your office and look at the people looking into their laps – they’re all on Facebook on their phone).

Death of the traditional creative team (at last):
Ad agencies have relied on pairs of designers and copywriters to come up with “killer” campaign ideas since the sixties. The world has changed somewhat since then so if you want to have a shot at an integrated campaign that doesn’t just make pretty TV ads or billboards you’ll need to find creative teams that go beyond just pretty pictures and witty headlines, social media experts, media planning and PR amongst others could all make contributions better at an earlier stage of campaign development). The most interesting work will be done by agencies and clients that get this.

Where are you?
Foursquare is still quite small compared to other social media platforms but the idea that internet and the real world converge is beautifully illustrated by the service which allows people to check-in and talk about spaces as they move around spaces. Watch out for Facebook Places launching in SA later in the year which should make the concept more mainstream.