As the end of the year approaches and 2024 awaits, let's look into what the year has been like for promotions and what might 2024 have in store. By reviewing the past year it can give us some incredible insight into what is to come and can be a great way for brands to prepare their promotions in the coming year. It’s never too early to start planning. A huge part of knowing what will resonate with your audience and what will help you achieve your brand marketing goals.
This year, brands have offered a whole slew of interesting experience-driven promotions. Gamification tactics have been a huge part of the rollout of brand promotions this past year, being great tools to engage and immerse consumers. In particular, augmented reality has been a frequent feature in many promotions in 2023.
2023 is estimated to finish the year with £3.6 billion in revenue in the worldwide AR advertising market. It’s a definite improvement from the market in 2019 when only 9% of 100 senior retail executives said they would be able to support AR experiences. It’s not unreasonable to say that AR shows no signs of slowing down.
AR has remained a hugely popular, growing, and improving integration for brands but has remained a massive market for some time now, being used as a way for consumers to try a product before making a purchase. Along with the popularisation of AR games, such as Pokemon Go, features, such as filters in social media platforms, are significant contributors to popularity.
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Next up, gamification, it has been and will be in the promotional space for years to come. With or without AR. Brands have been integrating gamified aspects into their campaigns for a while now, especially with consideration for mobile users. Even with how largely it’s used by marketers presently, it’s still predicted to grow by 30.4% by 2024. Companies like Coca-Cola have hosted all their gamified promotions onto their app, minimising potential latency and technical issues that can be associated with web-browser gamification, and encouraging users to return to the app to participate and engage in the brand’s promotions repeatedly. That being said, these latency issues can be mitigated by building with lightweight CSS and Javascript which eliminates the technical issues, our team at PromoNow are highly skilled at building smooth web experiences which are accessible to general audiences. Downloading an app is often considered a long-term decision for users as opposed to web-browser experiences which are ‘low-commitment’ but just as engaging.
PromoNow has also built several games that can slot into all kinds of promotions and be fully customised. These gamified aspects can separate your brand from the rest and enhance the consumer experience, helping to build a better relationship with customers and attract new eyes as well. Try our demos on mobile now.
Old Mout Cider wanted to create a campaign that would raise awareness to help save the native Kiwi bird from becoming extinct in New Zealand and, to make a real difference beyond that.
The game Kiwi Cycle did exactly that, it uses an addictive game concept which also contributes 1p to charity with each bottle that players collect in the game. The game closely relates to the branding of Old Mout Cider with a playful and artfully simplistic but striking style.
In the brand’s partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, they also used an augmented reality experience to create an entertaining experience for users allowing them to look around, search, and learn about the restoration of wildlife whilst remaining true to their brand.
PromoNow’s instant win algorithm API services connect seamlessly with blippAR
Social media has been an important part of marketing for a long time. Brands have been playing the social-media game, getting paid promotions from influencers or showcasing their product lines and latest campaigns on their socials. However, having looked at several on-pack promotions this year, many brands still fail to utilise their social media. Despite having access to these channels, lots of brands are under-utilising these digital channels. As we know, the consumer journey doesn’t stop at just one channel. As one of the very intermediate considerations to running a promotion; where your customers will see it is an important part. But as social media grows more prevalent, especially with the boom in popularity TikTok has experienced, brands need to consider the impact of social media.
Paid-for promotion and digital marketing are all well and good, but without a supportive and coherent omnichannel system, brands prevent themselves from maximising engagement and sales. With strong omnichannel strategies, companies can expect to convert 89% of consumers and buyers into loyal customers.
Many consumers scroll past sponsored or ad content, but will still engage with brand accounts, especially on TikTok where brand accounts create content tailored to their audience and see great success.
That being said, as great as social media can be, there are some marketing trends to leave behind in 2024. One that comes to mind is some cases of influencer marketing. When going forward with influencer promotions, brands need to treat it like a partnership, not just a marketing space. Does your brand’s goals align with theirs? Does this influencer represent your brand well? When brands fail to consider these influencers as partners, they lose consumer interest.
Consumers are highly sensitive to what’s advertising. 27% of consumers have a lower opinion of social media advertising following this past year and 39% say it’s because recent events have caused a loss in trust in social ads. So when influencers promote a brand, the brand should at least mean something to the audience and be something the audience will be interested in. Not disclosing an ad is not only unethical but unlawful, it will cause consumers to lose trust and interest in your brand.
A hugely successful example of influencer marketing is Dior’s campaign, the process to find the 67 influencers who would represent Dior was quite meticulous. Not only narrowing down influencers by quantitative factors such as past performance and engagement but also factors such as content style and quality, all to ensure that they would be a good match for Dior’s brand for their campaign. A huge focus of this campaign was the diversity of the shade range and so, a range of skin tones featured in this campaign, making sure consumers would feel represented by the influencer and by extension, Dior and their Forever Foundation.
For some time now, Chrome’s Google Privacy Sandbox has been built and integrated in place of third-party cookies; the initiative was introduced in 2019. After a delay in the release date, The Sandbox has finally reached general availability. To clue everyone in, the Privacy Sandbox intends to preserve privacy and user information without using third-party cookies which reduces the risk of invasive and predatory tactics which users are susceptible to with third-party cookies.
That being said, in Q1 of 2024, Chrome plans to disable third-party cookies for 1% of users to help them with testing and plans to completely disable it by Q3 2024. This is why brands need to begin changing how they build their promotions. As part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox’s commitments, the impact of the Privacy Sandbox tools is to be tested by Google, which will be working closely with CMA, and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) with supplementary tests from market participants to also be taken into consideration.
A popular and existing way forward in data collection for marketers now and in the following year that doesn’t rely on the Sandbox is first-party cookies. First-party cookies is data and information that are willingly offered by existing consumers, this can be through a multitude of ways but methods with an incentive for consumers such as loyalty rewards and schemes; competitions and promotions; or even exclusive content such as newsletters or emails.
For marketers and brands considering using a lot of first-party data, it’s worthwhile to utilise data layers. Data layers are an object in Javascript that helps collect data in a standardised and organised way, moving the data to the tools that need it such as consumer data platforms (CDP). At the end of this process, marketers get data that can be better understood to inform their knowledge of consumer behaviours, buying intent, and shopper conversions; aiding the process of taking action and building a strategy.
I’m sure the constant chatter and discussion around AI this year has been repetitive and while exciting for some, it has been intimidating and ‘overhyped’ for others.
It’s safe to say that AI will be sticking around for the foreseeable future, but which direction is it heading in?
This year has felt like a year of new features and new tools, we can expect these AI tools to be put into use at large in 2024. With a stronger understanding of integrating it into work-life, various digital activations will be using AI. At the same time, the success and reception of using such tools is difficult to say, ethical concerns have been a massive issue for AI development and this year, the EU published the EU AI Act, perhaps more should be expected in the coming years as AI continues to develop.
AI is here to stay but people are still unsure about its place and the roles it will take up. Although the concerns are not unwarranted, in 2024, AI needs people to actively participate in how it’s used and developed. Not just the developers, but the public at large. To make sure AI is used responsibly, there needs to be more wariness surrounding misinformation and bias in data when training AI.
The way AI is being used will mostly shift away from asset creation such as copy or images, but instead, for things like translation, voiceovers, and subtitling, although less exciting, has real tangible use and benefits. Such integrations are vital for accessibility and having AI capable of this, makes having accessible features much more cost and time-efficient to add and beneficial for everyone involved.
Recent events with OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman have left stakeholders with a lot of apprehension and concern. Sam Altman had been fired by the board of directors but returned not too long after.
The reason for Altman’s removal was explained to be (as explained by the board) Altman’s failure to be "consistently candid in his communications with the board." Former OpenAI employees also had written a letter to the Board of Directors at OpenAi which revealed some concerning developments in how OpenAi is “ transitioning from a non-profit to a for-profit entity.” This incident has proved deeply concerning for consumers and businesses who are using and built on GPT-4, with one of the biggest trailblazers of AI seemingly almost falling apart in a matter of days, it’s reasonable to expect alternatives to ChatGPT to either: receive more attention, see their public debut, or both in 2024. It’s an ideal time for competitors such as Google's Gemini as well as Anthropic and their Claude AI to receive more attention in 2024.
Many consumers are utilising their voice search and smart devices to find what they need, voice assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa are being used a lot more and this means as businesses, it may be time to optimise these types of searches which are often longer and more conversational.
Personalisation as a strategy in marketing and promotion is widely discussed and recommended but often, brands apply personalisation ineffectively. More often than not, personalisation is more than just about making your audience and customer feel represented. On digital channels, consumers want a way to define themselves to others. This is precisely why Spotify Wrapped consistently succeeds. Users are rewarded for using Spotify and can learn about themselves and share with others. Just seeing their names on an email is sometimes just not enough, it’s worth finding ways to integrate further ways to personalise a promotional experience. It’s an opportunity to get creative and encourage loyalty from consumers.
2023 has been a rollercoaster ride for the industry and there’s no doubt that 2024 will be just as exciting and unexpected. To keep your promotions organised and highly optimised for 2024, consider using the PromoNow platform. Speak with a platform consultant at +44 (0)20 380 555 38 or email [email protected] to learn more.
PromoNow is a managed end-to-end cloud platform empowering brand owners with rapid, scalable and secure solutions for any promotional activation
