The Power of Trends for Small-to Mid-size Ad Agencies

“When focus and differentiation are powered by a trend, the result is a charismatic brand that customers wouldn’t leave for love nor money. It’s the difference between paddling a surfboard and riding a wave.”

Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap and Zag

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What trends can your agency ride?

  • Social marketing is now mainstream among the general public and provides engaging opportunities to build awareness and appeal for your agency. Social marketing tools such as blogs, webinars, podcasting, videocasting, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTub, Flickr, etc
  • Broadband-to-go. JupiterResearch projects that cell phones will dominate laptops in terms of broadband access and deliver a critical mass audience — 40 million to 50 million users — by 2010. That means marketers should remain experimental, focusing campaigns on mobile experiences that are small-screen and SMS-like and that take advantage of local and social information.
  • Women now bring in more than half of the income in U.S. households. They now make 85 to 95 percent of the household spending decisions—including cars, boats, home remodeling, auto repairs and wealth management. Women control more than half of private wealth in the U.S.
  • Interactive marketing spending will more than triple over the next five years, reaching $61 billion by 2012, according to Forrester Research. To put this into context, interactive marketing, which currently accounts for just 8 percent of all ad spending, will increase to 18 percent of marketers’ total advertising budgets in five years.
  • “Green” has gone mainstream. It’s not just a trendy thing to say anymore. In 2009, letting your customers know that your product or service is eco-and socially responsible is literally a feature you want to communicate. A BBDO (Ad Agency) study recently showed that younger consumers made purchasing decisions based on how what “difference you made in the world.”

Download a PDF that illustrates additional trends you might recognize.

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About Michael Gass

Consultant | Trainer | Author | Speaker

Since 2007, he has been pioneering the use of social media, inbound and content marketing strategies specifically for agency new business.

He is the founder of Fuel Lines Business Development, LLC, a firm which provides business development training and consulting services to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies.

Comments

  1. Hi there,
    Sitting in London, that stat about women has really lept out. Is it true? or do you mean something else?

    You said “women now bring in more than half the income of US households”. Surely with more women looking after children and with women often being underpaid relative to men doing the same task (certainly the case in the UK), this can’t be right.

    I assume from what you write after the title that you mean “women account for over 50% of the spend in a household” not that they bring in more than 50% of the income.

    Can you give a source?
    Thanks
    Charlie

  2. Charlie, According to the Business Women’s Network and U.S. Census report it is a true statement.

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