Trends in Branding and Marketing for 2021 — Macro Trend 1: Uncertainty
(2/8) Macro Trends and The Ideas Lying Around
This is the second of a series of articles in which we discuss three macro trends impacting the world of business, viewed from the lens of branding and marketing, interpreting desk research specifically for marketing & branding in 2020, and adjusted by a post-2020 point of view. In this series of articles we offer advice for anyone with a strategic responsibility for marketing, branding, design or marketing technology — to navigate the playing field and have an impact on the world around you after 2020.
Compiled and adjusted Desk Research for Marketing & Branding in 2021
Entrepreneurship is in many ways at the core of many modern societies. And marketing is in many ways at the core of entrepreneurship — it’s all about finding product-market fit through communication. Or in other words: to find out how you can be of value to people around you by talking to them.
In this article, we’ll discuss the first two of three macro trends impacting the world of business, viewed from the lens of branding and marketing, interpreting desk research specifically for marketing & branding in 2020, and adjusted by a post-2020 point of view.
Macro trends impacting business, marketing, and branding up until 2020
1. Uncertainty
Bertrand Russel notes in his “History of Western Philosophy” how the ideas that are prevalent in a society and the ongoing historic events impacting societies, continuously reciprocally influence each other.
Let’s have a look at the changes we’ve seen and are expected to see in the past and upcoming years, and the ideas that seem to be prevalent in the societies that we are active in today. So we can have an idea of what might inspire leaders in our field over the upcoming weeks, months, or even years.
Economic, environmental and social pressures Next to the obvious tectonic shift in developing technologies, which we’ll get to in the next article in this series, over the past 10 years we have had to do with a lot of economic uncertainty, environmental issues, and worldwide social unrest and political polarization.
The question is how Covid-19, the subsequent lockdown and potentially fairly deep economic crisis — and possibly also the intense social and political unrest in the US and other places in 2020 — might affect how we respond to these crises in the months and years to come.
2. The ideas that are lying around
Well, what kinds of ideas are lying around, then, which might inform or inspire individual human beings, but also leaders in government, business and academia as to how to deal with the current challenges?
Yuval Noah Harari springs to mind, with his incredibly impactful books “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus”, in which he paints the picture of how human beings came to rule this planet, and what the future of our species might look like, respectively.
The main idea that Harari puts forth, is that at the beginning of this 21st century, as humans, with all the exciting and sometimes frightening new technological capabilities we’re developing —
What we’re missing is a story; a narrative that can give us and everything we endeavor, meaning and Purpose.
A hopeful story for humanity? Another historian, Rutger Bregman, potentially gives us a hint of what a new story for humanity might be.
Bregman’s pleas is that we change the narrative from the ‘selfish homo economicus’ to ‘humans thrive because we like to collaborate’ in “Human Kind, a Hopeful History” — The Sapiens of 2020, according to The Guardian. A wonderful read, in which Bregman methodically unravels the myth of the selfish human being and offers a much more hopeful and self-determining picture.
In an article for The Correspondent, Bregman hints at the idea that the neoliberal era — well-founded in the idea of the ‘selfish human’ — is ending, and wonders what comes next.
Speaking of ‘ideas lying around’, according to Bregman (and the Financial Times) we may soon see some serious influence from thinkers such as French economist Thomas Piketty — pushing toward far higher taxes for the richest in ‘social democracies’ as we have in much of The West.
We may even see serious impact from thinkers who are proponents of UBI schemes and algorithm-taxes. We just might be looking at a worldwide politico-economic shift towards more socialist policies, stronger governments and technology-enabled trust, governance and international cooperation.
Which all might just not be all that problematic as the problems we’re facing — economically, socially, and environmentally — are not things that can easily be solved by small regional or even national governments.
What’s probably slightly easier — though certainly not very easy — to predict than global economic, political, and social changes, are advancements in technology and their effects.
This will be the focus of the following article in this series.
What does this mean for marketing and branding in 2021?
What might a new, more hopeful view of humanity mean for the way business, marketing and branding should be done? And how will economic, environmental and social changes continue to impact the playing field?
Follow our updates and the next articles in this series to find out.
This is the second of a series of articles in which we discuss three macro trends impacting the world of business, viewed from the lens of branding and marketing, interpreting desk research specifically for marketing & branding in 2020, and adjusted by a post-2020 point of view. We then offer advice for anyone with a strategic responsibility for marketing, branding, design or marketing technology — to navigate the playing field and have an impact on the world around you after 2020.
The core of this advice will be as follows:
Businesses, Marketing and Brands will need to be much more human-centered and Purpose-driven to connect with stakeholders and have a significant positive impact in 2021 and beyond.
Apart from using technology as a multiplier for humanity and an authenthic, human connection, we view the alignment of Corporate Brand with Personal Brand — and thus the alignment of Organization’s missions with indivivual stakeholders’ personal ‘Why’s’ and Values — in other words; Brand Advocacy or Brand Ambassadorship — as paramount to your brand’s success in 2021 and beyond.
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