Companies are aware that each year brings on a different set of challenges than the previous year. While everyone hopes that 2022 will allow us to put COVID-19 and its consequences behind us, it will continue to have a major impact on consumer behaviour.
Even in countries where markets are going back to normal, there are areas where rapid and significant change will be needed; here are the main trends we have identified:
Planet Awareness
Concern for the environment is as important as ever, and consumers are likely to demand more from brands and their history. A report dated on August of 2021 of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted that no part of the planet will remain untouched by the next wave of ecological shock.
To face such crisis, industry professionals could consider the “double bottom line” (DBL), an approach that sets environmental benefits and impacts of a company’s activity at the same level. Investors are increasingly buying into this idea, considering that companies with strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials are well positioned for the long term.
Consumers expect brands to step up on environmental issues, and for DBL to make sense, this action must be comprehensive and sustained over time. Otherwise, brands risk being accused of ‘greenwashing’ if they fail their promises.
Social Commerce
The implementation of social commerce, as in e-commerce, has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic. Social platforms have become shopping destinations, as new technologies have made of communication media a home-based shopping experience.
Social media content creators are slowly gaining greater power as they have their followers transition to independent platforms. As livestreaming and other combinations of social entertainment and digital commerce become more popular, brands have a real opportunity if they are able to find effective ways to work with creators.
Content creators have significantly increased their global following. Their emergence is creating new channels and opportunities for brands to communicate, engage and interact with consumers.
Content creation economy is driven by passionate individuals sharing their interests with an engaged community. This changes the relationship between brands, media platforms, and creators, and is driving innovative partnerships and collaborations.
Creator communities and the concept of fandom are an increasingly important cultural force. The power of creator economy lies in its ability to cater to the different special interests and niches, and community commerce can provide a space in which creators and brands are able to create high levels of engagement that drive inspiration and purchase.
It is extremely important to provide creators creative freedom: this may scare some brands, but those that take the leap and understand that an “influencer collab” is the best way for to reach their audience will see good results.
A study carried out by Tik-Tok showed that 88% of its users discover new content while they are on the app, and one in two discover new products and brands in the process, as well as 91% of users act on the latter after viewing the content.
Changes in Consumer Behaviour
In most countries, quarantining at home no longer exist, while, even in places that supposedly have back-to-normal markets, consumers are not behaving in the same way as they did before the pandemic. Consumers’ interests, purchasing behaviours and preferences have changed significantly, offering companies new areas of opportunity in 2022.
While the true impact of the pandemic will take years to determine, palpable changes in attitudes and behaviour can be classified into three main trends, each of which will have an impact on marketing strategies throughout 2022:
- Our homes are in the spotlight: forced to stay at home for months at a time, consumers are increasingly connected to their homes. In some cases, they are moving away from cities, investing in home improvements and eating more meals at home, and Google searches for home, kitchen and bathroom design ideas are on the rise.
- Wellness has become a priority: increased attention to medical issues has made consumers focus on physical and mental health. GWI research has found that 31% of consumers are concerned about their mental health after lockdowns.
- Digital acceleration: quarantine significantly accelerated the shift to e-commerce, also making customers’ travels more complicated. Facebook found that 4 out of 10 consumers were buying things online that they used to buy in stores.
Measuring Campaign Efficiency
Measuring of advertising is undergoing change like never before. For industry professionals, this will imply acquiring a “less narrow” view of campaign performance and being more proactive in measuring long-term effectiveness.
It will be harder for brands to access and analyse user data, due to increased privacy regulation, Google’s removal of third-party cookies (now planned for 2023) and Apple’s decision to require users to agree to ad tracking by mobile apps.
For some industry professionals, the solution to the looming shortage of third-party data will be to duplicate the collection of source data. However, not all brands will be able to create large pools of source data: 85% of those surveyed by WARC expect their business to be affected by data privacy restrictions, and more than half (56%) agree that consumer profiling amid increasing data fragmentation is the biggest challenge for marketing in a post-cookie world.
The Metaverse
Advertisers will turn to the “metaverse“. While the metaverse began as a concept of science-fiction, major companies, such as Epic Games and Facebook, are working to bring the metaverse to life with combined digital and physical experiences. Consumer screen-time does not look like it will diminish, and brand managers will seize the opportunity to access new advertising placements, formats, audiences and opportunities of innovation in the virtual world.
Wunderman Thompson introduces five new trends through Óscar Peña:
- Control is no longer in the same hands. Consumers become creators of their own stories.
- No boundaries between the real and the virtual world. There are no longer barriers to the perception of a virtual environment.
- The era of virtual goods, such as NFTs. A survey by Wunderman Thompson has shown that people would pay $ 76,000 for a digital house, $ 9,000 for an original art piece or more than $ 3,000 for a digital handbag.
- Mirror worlds and AR. There are endless opportunities for brands with augmented reality, which amplifies the real world.
- Enriched data to the power of “n”. Data collection will be the cornerstone of the very evolution of metaverses. Millions of data will be generated by real-time tracking mechanisms.
Development of Programming
If 2020 was the year in which advertisers were quick to react to change, 2021 has been the time of recovery. Programmatic advertisers responded to new challenges and opportunities and are now looking ahead to 2022.
While the future is difficult to foresee, let’s take a look into the minds of industry professionals as they develop their strategies and plans for 2022. What are their favourite channels and where do they want to invest their budget? Here are the top four:
- Display: online display campaigns are a favourite. More than 60% of media planners worldwide rank it among the top three programmatic channels for their ad budget. It remains an important channel for existing media buying strategies and we can see that throughout 2022 58% of industry professionals will continue looking to increase their display costs.
- Connected TV: it’s no surprise that 2021 was the year of CTV advertising, and it’s going to remain strong for 2022. That’s why 80% of advertisers want to increase their CTV ad budget compared to 2021. CTV is great on its own, but to increase exciting performance, advertisers should think about adopting an omni-channel approach
- Omni-channel: knowing where to allocate advertising budgets is not easy when formats keep changing and growing. The best way to achieve a true omni-channel strategy is to consider, in first place, the desired results and then how best to achieve them.
- More than “cookieless”: delaying its arrival gives industry professionals more time to explore alternatives and find partners who can make the transition as smooth as possible. First trials shows that cookie-free strategies may perform better than cookie-based ones, so it may be time to get ahead of the competition.
By: Alicia Díaz