Upcoming Marketing Trends to Exploit in 2020

Published on 14 January 2020

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The new year is upon us and we’re already looking to the future! Using 2020 vision, we’ve comprised a list of our top 5 predictions of trends in experiential marketing that are soon to rear their heads and take over in 2020 …

Sustainable Pop-Ups

Pop-Ups have become remarkably popular in the last 2 or 3 years, and rightly so! They’re an awesome tool to utilise when going down the experiential marketing path. They allow you to design and set-up a completely immersive experience down to nearly every detail. This is a great way to engage the consumer and have them interact with the brand on a much more personal level.

However, an even bigger trend that has been surfacing in a similar time period is ‘sustainability’. It’s a huge issue that we, here at Sketch, are deeply passionate about and a pressing matter that needs to see us all take action if it is to be resolved. Pop-ups are temporary and the production of pop-ups can and, most often, do lead to a high volume of wasted material. This year we are hoping to lead then line and also see our peers ensuring that all pop-ups are produced in a sustainable fashion, producing minimal waste and emissions.

Keep your eyes and ears open in 2020 and you should see a lot more of recycled and recyclable materials being used in the production of pop-up shops.

Mobile Augmented Reality

 Augmented reality has been around for years but we’re now seeing huge advancements in the technology, which is enabling it to be utilised from the palm of your hand! Virtual reality headsets are so 2019. Yeah, being taken to another world was really cool (last year) and had the world itching to experience VR, but the ease of use and mobility of AR makes for a far smoother experience.

The main difference between virtual reality and augmented reality is that, when experiencing VR, you are injected into a completely different, fabricated reality. Augmented reality injects fabricated images into your own reality. Having to put on a headset and awkwardly move around trying to navigate in a virtual environment is clunky. Consumers want everything now or 10 minutes ago in today’s society and that’s what will ensure that AR is going to prevail in 2020.

We’ve seen glimpses of mobile AR in the past with applications like ‘Pokémon Go’ having world-dominating success and Apple’s iOS measure app that enables you to calculate the size of objects in the real world without needing a tape measure or ruler.

In terms of utilisation in the world of experiential marketing, the possibilities are nearly limitless! It enables the production photo opportunities, interactive games & activities, space transformations, futuristic displays and much more!

PR Pranks

With the Fiji water girl going viral, in less than no time, with her photobombing of the Golden Globes red carpet, don’t be surprised to see more brands pulling off similar, high-profile PR pranks to get their products seen on some of the world’s biggest stages and amongst the most influential faces in media.

Pranks don’t just have to be live in the flesh. Online dating powerhouse ‘Tinder’ announced on Twitter for April Fools that they were going to be introducing a new (and very controversial) feature to their app called ‘Height Verification’. This was going to police a well-known issue that a lot of people have shared experience of in the world of online dating… ‘Height Fishing’ – when an individual lies about their height, to make their dating profile appear more attractive. Obviously, height verification wasn’t a feature that Tinder would be able to implement to their application. However, it created a huge conversation online with many people feeling amused, outraged and every other emotion in between. Once those who hadn’t already figured out it was a joke were brought up to speed, the internet laughed at this hilarious prank that probably saw Tinder’s online impressions absolutely skyrocket!

Here at Sketch, we work hard to stay ahead of the curve. So, we’re no stranger to a PR prank. We were involved with PR Agency in the production of Paddy Power’s Daft Punk prank at the BRIT Awards in 2014.

Two individuals, with the Daft Punk helmets on, were sent to imitate the electro duo and crash the red-carpet event as a promotion for Paddy Power. The pair exposed and posed for the cameras by dropping their trousers and revealing the infamous, green Paddy Power boxers.

Flower Bombing

Flower bombing ~ the action of beautifying a space or area, that would never naturally support plant life, with floral decorations.

Flower bombing is – more often than not – a guerrilla style marketing stunt. The industry only saw a few examples of it in the UK last year but we’re predicting that it’s going to be everywhere this 2020. With this rise oncoming in popularity, we may actually see it transition towards becoming a more traditional method of marketing, depending on the desired effect of the campaign. Watch this space!

One of the great features of flower bombing is that you can really tailor the look and feel of it suit your brand, the product, the campaign as different flowers and colours of have inferences and ‘meanings’ which allows the display to do some of the talking for you. The main reason for doing a flower bombing, however, is ‘Instagrammability’ (bit of a tongue twister!). If you’re not familiar with the term; it’s all to do with making something worthy of someone capturing on their phone and posting it to the gram. We’ve got a whole article on how to ‘Do it for the Gram’ on our blog page! The beautiful aesthetic of the ‘flower bomb’, contrasted with the juxtaposed surroundings, always attracts the eyes and attention of passers-by, creates conversation and encourages them to look further into the who, what and why. Accompanying flower bombing with brand ambassadors, leafleteers, posters and other points of information can really drive up conversions and leads as they will provide onlookers with any context and detailed information that the display could not.

ECHO Displays

ECHO Displays are a ground-breaking innovation that we think could completely revamp the face of advertising in the future. But we’re predicting that, for now, 2020 is the year they’ll begin to create some serious waves in the industry.

The technology seems lightyears ahead of what we even thought would be possible in this day and age, but the results are miraculous. Essentially, what it does is produce a holographic-like display, that is only visible to the viewer, by utilising persistence of vision display technology. It consists of a reflector and projection system that is capable of producing skyscraper sized light billboards!

We are expecting to see the ECHO displays debut in, the capital of UAE, Dubai – a hotspot for technological innovation and architecture making it a perfect fit for this futuristic method of display advertising. Hopefully the ECHO makes its way back to the UK, where the technology was conceived, but for now we’re just excited to see it in action!