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If there’s anything I’ve learned as a business leader during the pandemic, it’s the concept of adaptive innovation — creating an agile, collaborative and creative model within your business to meet the needs of your customers. To be truly amenable to adaptive innovation, leaders must also understand the underlying drivers of macro trends that will transform business and society over the next decade. In 2021, many of these larger trends were contradictions unto themselves. See:
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The triumph of futuristic mRNA AND the failure of legacy supply chains.
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Robust GDP growth plus low unemployment AND high economic anxiety due to rising inflation.
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The institutionalization of working from home (a driver of “The Great Resignation”) AND commercial real estate valuations setting records.
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The delay of Google’s cookie deprecation (predicted correctly) AND the acceleration of Apple’s rise as a gatekeeper and ad seller.
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Retail sales, with a bounceback of physical locations, growing at twice the rate of the US economy AND ecommerce expanding its share gains.
These contrasts demonstrate that we are in primacy of the digital economy, which is causing a shift in the relationship between brands and consumers. Below, I’ll discuss four top marketing trends to consider to help future-proof your brand this year and beyond.