• by Rick Milenthal , Op-Ed Contributor, January 2, 2020

There are many reasons 2020 is going to be an awesome year.  The synthetic human brain, moon mining, a high-speed rail linking London to Beijing and much more.  In our orbit, it will be the year where we see the new age of marketing move from proof of concept to established fact.

Last year, we predicted that 2019 would see the strategic union of data science and creative at scale, allowing brands to develop multiple messages for a previously unheard of number of niche audience segments, defining and activating increasingly narrow (and more relevant) groups.

2020 will be the year when proof of concept becomes the norm. And the results will be massive.  

Basic marketing truths we’ve held to since school will need to be rethought.

Now that computational processing power and data science techniques can simultaneously make sense of the thousands – or millions, or billions – of data points, we will question concepts as basic as that of “target market.”  

Instead of targeting a handful of personas, we will realize our potential consumers represent a constellation of diverse, micro markets, composed of very different people who happen to share a similar need or desire. With all of the data and creativity in our marketing arsenal, the barriers that prevent us from acquiring all audiences that we can responsibly and profitably identify, reach, and convert will be removed.  

We finally get that brands are way bigger and more powerful than we ever dreamed.

Historically, brands have sought to maximize their position and strength by working diligently to maintain a single positioning. This idea needs to be expanded: a brand may have a single position, but there are many reasons to believe in it.

Put another way: a product’s benefit doesn’t need to change from consumer to consumer, but by matching the most relevant support point to a particular individual’s behavioral intent, we can maximize conversion without disrupting an overarching brand message.  

We’ve been taught that branding and direct messaging to individuals need to be looked at as different marketing objectives. But when a brand can instantly communicate the right message in the right situation, based on whatever factors are most relevant – this false dichotomy can be put to rest. 

We start to leverage the power of new technologies and truths for the good of our clients – and the world.

Brands and their agencies will be expected to contribute more to the world than ever before. Our ability to effectively communicate with exponentially larger audiences will allow us to create more and deeper connections than we could conceive of even five years ago.

This not only allows us to truly maximize the reach and conversion potential of the brands we serve, it also allows us to create dialogs around the issues that they and their consumers care about most - socially, politically, environmentally and financially.   

In 2020, we will move irrevocably into what is conceivably the end game of marketing: a future where a target market is a segment of one, where virtually every individual can be precisely targeted with highly relevant messages (albeit anonymously and with appropriate permissions).

This means executing at the intersection of data science and creative. To operate in this new world order, we need to recalibrate how all of our marketing disciplines adapt to enable the individualization (as opposed to personalization) of communications.