Shagorika Heryani

t was the best of times. It was the worst of times. 2018 was a year of contradictions.

Global advertising spend grew by 4.3 per cent to $558bn, of which 39 per cent was on digital. However, over 400 million people now use ad blockers and that number is growing by 40 per cent a year. Programmatic advertising will soon account for two thirds of digital ad spend, but the estimated cost of ad fraud could be as high as $28bn.

Led by millennials and Generation Z, 65 per cent of consumers claim they buy on the basis of their beliefs, while 57 per cent are buying or boycotting brands based on a brand’s position on a social or political issue. This has led to a deluge of ‘purposeful brands’ across categories, all valiantly saving the world while selling us stuff, even though research tells us that consumers actually care less about brand purpose than we think. People will often look the other way when a brand offers them convenience or value for money.

And while we have 2.6 quintillion bytes of data being generated daily, only 20 per cent of marketers know their customers and only 7 per cent employ that data learning for real-time contextual advertising.

Due to these contradictions, and coupled with the relentless disruption all businesses are experiencing, marketers are navigating unchartered terrain without a roadmap, often grappling with swathes of data they can’t comprehend or shiny new tech that doesn’t deliver. This is why strategic planning will be more critical to agencies and brands in 2019 and beyond.

Strategic planning used to be top of the funnel, defining the big culture-defying consumer insight that was beautifully expressed in compelling creative. That model is becoming increasingly redundant because this is a brand-centric model and not a consumer-centric one. It doesn’t account for complex consumer behaviour and how brands should respond to it. Modern strategic planning will deliver infinitely more value by operating at the intersection of brand, consumer and business strategy and not merely communication development.

There are two overarching critical changes in both thinking and culture that agencies and their clients need to make:

Marketers must think of marketing frameworks and not marketing plans. Consumers expect on-demand brands that deliver compelling stories one moment, a contextual offer the next, and post-purchase loyalty too. This radical shift in consumer expectation means pre-defined creative messaging won’t work. What’s needed is agile marketing frameworks where brand values, purpose and tone of voice are well-defined and communicated, but creative assets are automated and personalised to serve individual consumer needs in real-time.

Agencies must think of strong strategic planning as an agency mindset and not a division. Brand success in 2019 depends on finding opportunities and insights continuously, whether in a particular category or within consumer or popular culture, and executing those swiftly and well. This requires a cultural shift to break down agency silos and unshackle strategy from a division to a mindset that infects teams from account management and creative to production. This will ensure that strategic thinking for clients flows both upstream and downstream, from agile execution of campaigns to solving complex, transformative business challenges. I believe four key advertising trends will play out more emphatically in 2019. And here’s how strategic planning will help brands deliver against those trends:

Advertising will deliver performance marketing that matters. Delivering targeted ads faster creates relevance and value for consumers, but if everyone’s doing it the consumer is still

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bombarded by ads and brands are deluged with data signals they can’t decipher, leading to insufficient quality leads or conversions. By drawing insights from clients’ first-party data and agency research tools, helping plan and predict marketing that delivers on business goals and not media goals will be the most impactful tactical intervention strategic planners will bring to clients.

Advertising will be divisive and therefore more impactful. Brands telling powerful stories to break through the clutter is a given, but most brands have fallen into the ‘world peace’ rut – telling positive, unobjectionable stories when consumers are craving brands that have a distinct point of view. Nike with Colin Kaepernick is the perfect example of how this trend will play out and how it can be executed for business and brand success. This is familiar hunting ground for most agencies, but now requires maturity and deftness to craft and execute a brand narrative in the age of social media vitriol.

Advertising will form high-quality influencer partnerships. People don’t trust brands. They trust their friends and celebrity influencers. Hence the rise of influencer marketing. However, the influencerfor-hire model is creating a credibility issue and brands need to break out of the formulaic way of engaging influencers. Rather than an influencer programme retrofitted into a marketing campaign, strategic planners should help clients map and implement a year-long influencer strategy that leads to high-quality partnerships with relevant influencers. This will create credibility for the brand and not communication spikes.

Advertising will promise and deliver on brand experience. The ability to engage, inspire and provoke audiences through experiences and to grab headlines will be a critical brand imperative in 2019. The role of strategic planning will be to uncover the human emotion we want to evoke with consumers and communities and translate that into a pop-culture moment so that it delivers scale and impact for brands.

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For clients and agencies, 2019 will be a tough year, but I am optimistic that a renewed focus on strategic planning and agile marketing thinking will deliver both fame and effectiveness for brands. Shagorika Heryani is the head of strategy at Grey MENA