Trend Predictions for Brands in 2015

It has been said that there are three types of marketers and how they deal with trends: those who let trends happen, those who make trends happen, and those who don’t know what happened. Those who make it happen are the smart marketers and are innovators.

There were many brands that innovated in 2014 and here is a look at some brand and marketing trends for 2015:

1. Customization: Consumers will expect more customized and personalized products, services and experiences.
2. Growth of Digital and Mobile: Digital and mobile will fuel the sense of empowerment and possibility for consumers.
3. Brand Engagement: Marketers will link engagement to how well their brand is perceived. Counting likes and leveraging imagery will no longer be a main priority.
4. The Everything Expectation: The ability for brands to measure real, unarticulated, and constantly expanding emotional consumer expectations will provide advantages to engage, delight, and profit.
5. Real-Time: Increased real-time brand expectations will spread. This will be linked to: product availability, delivery, and customer service.
6. Brand Differentiation: Consumer expectations will increase. Consumers will view products/services more as commodities. Brands will have to differentiate and stand for something meaningful, emotional, and important to consumers, especially when dealing with millennials.
7. Brands Will Get Emotional: Successful brands will need to use emotional values as a foundation for positioning, differentiation, and authentic storytelling.
8. Engaging over Entertaining: The stories brands tell must reflect real brand values and category realities. These stories need to differentiate the brand and be believable, otherwise marketers will end up entertaining rather than engaging.
9. Closing the Showroom: Consumers will on average use 5+ online sources to facilitate actual purchase decisions. This will reduce reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar retail.
10. High-Tech Shopping Experiences: Retailers will implement more digital assistants and virtual valets. Look out for more RFID, beacons, and touchscreens to supercharge the retail-shopping experience.
11. Multiculturalism: As ethnic groups grow and brands expand globally, brands and retailers will integrate a sense of culture and culture-specific brand experiences with all forms of outreach.
12. Online Security: Consumers will expect greater security in regards to personal purchase data and information, especially after all the recent company hacks and data breaches.

Everyday marketers and brands face new challenges. These trends are just some of the things that are expected to affect brands and their strategies in 2015. What are some other trends that you believe will affect brands?

We would like to thank Forbes for their informative article on 2015 Brand Trends.