Advertising is dying

You’d have more success predicting what the rand/dollar exchange rate will be two years from now than you would trying to predict the future trends of an industry that is in as much flux as advertising. Because it’s in danger of becoming irrelevant, advertising will always need to find other ways to flourish. One of the ways it will do this is to infiltrate popular culture more effectively. Ads won’t look like ads. They’ll be more like pieces of content. Think of Kim Kardashians’ ass on the cover of Paper Magazine. Everyone now knows about that print publication because the image they ran on their cover broke the Internet.

We’re not only competing with competitor brands but all entertainment out there (300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds) so the need to tell better stories in a more engaging and entertaining way than anyone else will be greater than ever. These stories will need to be more personalised and relevant to people on an almost individual level. People seek out entertainment.

There are over 10 months’ worth of YouTube videos viewed on Facebook every minute. The only ads people seek out are the entertaining ones. Which means most ads out there will be ignored if they’re not good enough. So advertising will find better ways to tell a brand’s story. It will take on different forms, like a financial institution launching a reality TV show to tell their brand’s story about how they can help people better save their money.

With digital marketing transforming the industry, the trend of advertising becoming the product itself will continue and it will improve our lives in more useful ways - like cutting 20 minutes out of our commute, helping us never having to stand in a bank queue again or even getting us help in an emergency situation quicker. Health insurance companies are using product innovation to define their brand story.

They’re finding that innovative tech solves to save lives with their apps which forms a large part of their product offering. Consumers want things that matter from brands, not just a great viral film. So the trend for advertising in 2016 is that it won’t be dead despite the many “controversial” headlines to the contrary. It will redefine itself again. 

While it may have been slow to do so it’s quite resilient because people will always respond to storytelling. It’s just that now, in the digital age of marketing, we have so many more interesting channels to connect with our audiences and tell them these stories.