didn’t see that coming

I’d actually wanted to create a big manifesto to kick this thing off, but instead I think I’m just going to list a few things that I believe in right now, and will be the starting point for some of the conversations I hope to have here:

• Marketing can, should, and will become more about value exchange and less about interruption and volume. Successful brands will foster real engagement with customers and encourage advocacy by providing additional value back to the consumer in as many ways as possible. Early examples of this can be found in branded content, brand utilities, experiential marketing, and product and service innovation. Advertising as noise will become increasingly made irrelevant by both ad-advoidance technology, our own improving mental filters, and by more effective and appealing alternatives.
• In a related trend, as increasing transparency is brought to bear upon corporations by the social web, as and the nature of marketing changes, consumers will demand more responsibility from companies, and vote for brands doing good with their wallets. Enterprises and agencies will be competing to out-do each other on the most innovative, effective, and attention-grabbing contributions to our collective welfare as a major competitive differentiator. The greening of brands a prime example of this, but there is a lot more still to come.
• Holistic experience design of all a brand’s touch points is also emerging as a key competitive differentiator. Brand strategy, product design, marketing and CRM are all becoming increasingly intertwined, and need to be orchestrated to work together in complete harmony. How best to pull these different but related different disciplines together, and who in organizations and on agency side will emerge to drive the integration and innovation in this space forward, are key questions for brands and agencies for the coming years.
• Digital technologies and the interactions and communication possibilities they enable are changing everything about our world. We still are at the very beginning of a sea change for both consumers and brands, and it’s going to be driven deeper and faster by the younger generations, who are growing up not just living with the technology but fully embedded in it.
• Being at the edge of these spaces and actively attempting to push things forward is much more challenging than doing what has always been done, but it’s also more fun and considerably more rewarding.

So and finally, to the name. Why “Didn’t see that coming”? Well, to tell you the truth I think it’s probably a placeholder, and I’ll re-brand at some point, so to speak. But basically it stuck out at me as statement…whether it’s uttered as a plaintive cry or an exclamation of amazement, it’s a reminder that despite living in a world that has a surplus of consultants, analysts, and trend gurus who will assure you they know what’s coming next, the reality is it’s all just our best guess. These days the changes and surprises are coming faster and faster. But rather than fear change, or ignore it, the best thing to do is to embrace it and recognize that in change, there is opportunity, and the only wrong thing to do is to not evolve with it.

And on the topic of evolution, apparently multi-national communications giant Nokia started out as a wood-pulp mill in Tampere, Finland.

So, let’s start something and see what happens…