INTRODUCTION

Welcome back to our annual New Marketing issue. This is a special focus on the state of the industry, looked at from some different angles. We’ve split it into three parts. The unifying theme of those parts is perhaps that we are looking not at agencies, as we often do, but at other components of the brand communications ecosystem.

First, we have asked marketers to tell us about their sectors. On page 21, Marwa Kaabour, Al Masaood Group’s head of marketing and communications, talks about how the process of buying and selling cars is changing. And then Yas Island Experience Hub’s performance marketing director, Matt Nelson, explains how people are holidaying today.

Once we have seen how things look from a marketer’s perspective, we shift our viewpoint to see how different types of media are holding up. And that’s ‘media’ in the broad sense of people and platforms that convey brand messages. Here you will find insights on influencer marketing, events, digital platforms and more.

The third part of ‘The New Marketing’ is all about Faces to Watch, professionals on the client and brand side aged 30 and under who have been nominated by their bosses or the agencies they work with, and put forward as the future of the marketing industry. I make no secret that Faces to Watch is one of my favourite series that Campaign carries. Some of the Faces are new to their trade, and some have been going for a few years and already boast impressive titles. All of them are believed by their colleagues, partners and peers to show big potential, and many of them will go on to shape the industry for the rest of us.

Some haven’t been in their jobs long enough to know what marketing can be like without a pandemic. But all of them are facing the same challenges as the marketers and media in the pages that precede them. Those challenges include adapting to a post-pandemic consumer mindset, and navigating a predominantly online ecosytem that is getting more and more digital by the day.

Those challenges are also opportunites, and in the next few pages you will have a chance to see how brands and platforms are seizing those. You will see how media are adapting to work with, rather than against the tech giants. You will see how marketers are reacting nimbly to a public that wants service at the speed of Amazon, backed by business ethics that won’t destroy the Amazon.

In this issue we can see where we have been, where we are now and where we are going. Luckily, the new generation of consumers is being served by a combination of experienced, empathetic, enthusiastic and inspired marketers and media, and this is the right place to meet those players and let them share their insights and understanding of the industry.