2014 has been a great year, and a lot has happened.
We’ve learnt that brands are embracing and striving to create content that resonates with their audiences. These audiences have become more and more complex, and their expectations are higher than ever. Second screen content, captivating content, interactive content – the sure thing is that often this content is not a hard sell, and more a story told that resonates with brand truths and cultural truths.
Brands have evolved as well and their demands are higher. Clients want work delivered through an integrated strategy. This has powered a comeback of the ‘full-service agencies’, which are more and more important and will be in the spotlight in 2015.
Will this put digitally-driven shops on edge in 2015? We’ll have to wait and see. This could mean, though, a refresh of the traditional agencies that are creative powerhouses.
We’ve learnt that you can’t break the internet that easily, but you can at least try (yes, we’re talking to you, Mrs. Kardashian). It’s clear that every brand is trying to capitalise on virality based on some previous success stories, such as the Academy Awards selfie, a stunt by Samsung, took on a Samsung phone.
It seemed like this Christmas just gone was a tough battle between household names like Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Boots, just to name a few. Big budgets have been poured into creating festive pieces that aimed to capture the audience’s interest on a big scale. What seemed just a common sense decision a few years ago, having a Christmas-themed ad, is now somewhat of an event that everyone anticipates. It will be interesting to see what 2015 has in store.
Programmatic, mobile, big data – all these fancy words have been thrown around in 2014 but it seems like 2015 is really the year where they will come heavily into play. With Google announcing full transparency, including DoubleClick viewer stats, this should be a fun playing field. There will be a jump in digital and social, but we think it will be a bit clearer and more straight-forward, for both the users, brands, and agencies involved.
