The Marketer’s Toolkit: what marketers need to know to succeed in 2023 

Ninety-five percent of marketers globally expect to be affected by economic recession, according to a survey for WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2023, an annual report that identifies the most important market trends that marketers should focus on to help drive their business in the year ahead. 

Context 

End-of-pandemic optimism at the start of 2022 faded quickly as the war in Ukraine turned the world on its head. The invasion has had a transformative impact on energy prices, inflation and the cost of living around the world. The IMF is forecasting the weakest growth in twenty years, except for the global financial crisis and the worst phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Five themes for 2023

The following key themes emerged from WARC’s survey of 1,700 marketers worldwide for The Marketer’s Toolkit: Global Trends Report:

1. Marketing in a cost of living crisis: While almost all marketers are concerned about the impact of the economic crisis, more respondents are planning to increase spend than last year, across both brand and performance. However, 36% are planning to cut marketing investment, despite evidence from prior downturns suggesting they should maintain spending levels.
2. Price vs. planet: a false dichotomy: 37% of represented companies expect to continue with their sustainability objectives despite the economic situation, while 35% foresee only “some small compromises.” Brands are also challenging the idea that eco-credentials necessarily result in price increases, with examples of local sourcing and use of the circular economy potentially lowering costs.
3. A reckoning for Big Tech: The majority of advertisers (62%) agree that a range of changing market dynamics are forcing strategic shifts from the tech giants, and respondents concerned about the dominance of the ‘duopoly’ have halved over the past two years. More respondents plan to decrease investment in Facebook than increase it for the first time in six years, which suggests that brands are resetting their relationships with Big Tech.
4. The clash of demand, delivery and disruption: Supply chain disruptions are expected to hit brands in 2023, but not evenly. Sixty percent of marketers anticipate non-trivial supply chain disruptions, but just 26% expect they will be significant or severe. This rises to one in three amongst European respondents. And 52% felt challenger brands would be the hardest hit, as they struggle for profitability. Marketers have an important role to play in managing and minimizing supply chain disruption
5. The era of ‘bubble up’ culture: Media and audience fragmentation was the second biggest concern in our survey, with 34% of respondents picking it. Among North American respondents, it was the highest ranked. Two-thirds of marketers expect to focus more on platforms that allow them to stitch together interest-based communities to create reach in a fragmented media world. Other channels with deeply embedded communities such as gaming and influencers/social media content are also set to attract more investment from advertisers next year.

A sample version of the global report featuring the first chapter, is available to read here.

The full series, available to WARC subscribers, will include the following reports:

• The Future of Digital Commerce (launching December 2022)

• The Future of Media Report (launching January 2023)

• The China Toolkit (launching January 2023)

The reports will be complemented by a series of podcasts. 

Most Americans believe social media is corrosive to democracy

Around the world, most people believe social media has generally been a good thing for democracy in their countries, while the United States tends to perceive it as more of a danger to democracy – a gap that could be explained by generational differences.

Why it matters

Social media is used by huge proportions of the 19 countries Pew surveyed – that’s not surprising – but the medium’s adoption by older generations might be a key to understanding why it's viewed differently in the US than in other countries.

Across the world, older users (50+) have been the sharpest growing segment of the population to start using social media, but the US is interesting – along with Japan – for its high proportion (60%) of older users. This contrasts with most European countries in which fewer than 50% of people aged 50 or older use social. Could this division explain the gap?

The numbers: US is markedly different

• An average of 57% of all countries polled say social media has been good for democracy, with 35% saying it has been bad.
• In the US, however, this dips to 34% who say it has been good, and 64% saying it is bad.
• On other metrics such as perceptions of division and civility, 79% of American respondents said it had contributed to more political divisions and 69% felt it had made people less civil, versus global medians of 65% and 46%, respectively.

Around the world, however, an average of 84% of people agree that social media (and the internet more broadly) have made manipulation through misinformation or rumours easier. And 70% of the same sample believe the spread of false information online to be a major threat, second only to climate change.

Anxiety of influence

The core takeaway, then, is that people do see social media as deeply influential, with global majorities agreeing that it is an effective way of influencing politics and policy.

• Most (77%) agree that it is an effective way to raise awareness.
• 65% say it is an effective way to change minds.
• 64% say it is a useful way to get elected officials to pay attention to an issue.
• 61% say it is an influence on policy decisions in their country.

Sourced from Pew Research

[Image: Pew Research Center]

Amazon is Inspire-d by TikTok

E-commerce giant Amazon is launching a feature called Inspire within its app that will allow customers to scroll through a continuous feed of photos and videos featuring products they can click on and purchase.

How it works

Customers access Inspire via a lightbulb-shaped icon at the bottom of Amazon’s app, the Wall Street Journal explains. On their first use they can select their interests and the portal will then curate content accordingly.

Why it matters

The set-up will be familiar to anyone who uses TikTok, whose algorithms deliver content to users’ feed based on what it understands they will like. This has also been a major factor in TikTok making significant advances in social shopping, or what it prefers to call “community commerce”.

Amazon’s move into this area follows a path already trodden by other US tech giants as they look for ways to replicate the innovations around short-form video coming out of China – and from TikTok in particular – and to combine social media features with online shopping. 

What next? 

• Inspire is currently shopping-focused but it could expand into options to share content and trending content. 
• Amazon believes Inspire can attract influencers and help them grow their business, earning money when followers make purchases through customized links.

Key quote

“Video-based content really helps [customers] to understand the product more” – Oliver Messenger, Amazon’s director of shopping.

Sourced from Wall Street Journal

[Image: Wall Street Journal]