It’s that time of year when we turn our attention to what to expect for the year ahead.
2020 is one of those banner years, the start of a new decade and also a date that has loomed ahead of us for many years as a “what will X be like in 2020?” focus for predictions and prognostications.
Well, 2020 is now virtually upon us so we really only have time for one more set of predictions before we actually have to get to the coalface and start carving out our destiny.
So, with no further ado, here are a dozen predictions and trends for 2020:
1 Traditional media will continue to fight the good fight
We’ve seen plenty of doom-laden headlines recently, as publishers and media proprietors evolve and adapt to a digital-first world.
- Mediaworks has announced that its TV assets are up for sale, triggering much speculation and angst but (so far at least) little publicly-announced resolution.
- NZME and STUFF are once again attempting to convince the powers that be that they should be allowed to merge, this time armed with the concept of a Kiwi-share-style commitment to the plurality of journalistic voices.
- And, less publicly, smaller magazine publishers such as Healthy Food Guide have switched to digital-only publication. It’s good news for the trees, but represents a significant sales and marketing challenge for niche publishers.
There are no simple answers. Whilst the delivery mechanisms will continue to change, we still need local television, radio, newspaper and magazine content in our lives. The biggest challenge for traditional media proprietors is to try to avoid turning analogue dollars into digital dimes. In 2020, the struggle will continue.
2 Streaming will grow but traditional TV will endure
In late 2019, NZ television broadcasters gained two powerful new streaming competitors, Apple TV+ and Disney+. Both attracted more than their fair share of subscribers but neither is yet a “must have” in terms of compelling content. Meanwhile, the most popular streaming provider in New Zealand is still TVNZ Ondemand.
We are, slowly but steadily, moving from a linear broadcast model to a smorgasbord, consume-what-you-want-when-you-want, television offering. Still, the free-TV-channels-paid-for-by-ads formula has quite a bit of mileage left in it, so don’t pivot too soon.
3 Squabbling over sports rights
We’ve already seen the primal forces at work in the pay television market, with new-to-TV entrant Spark purchasing an increasing number of sports broadcasting rights, including of course the Rugby World Cup and New Zealand domestic cricket coverage.
Long-standing incumbent Sky Television has responded with its own countermoves, signing up New Zealand Rugby to a precedent-setting five year rights deal and entering into a flurry of other contracts to protect its turf.
Whilst these are significant enough developments in their own right, we must not forget the elephants not yet in the room: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (collectively known as FAANG). These deep-pocketed tech giants are busily expanding their footprints into the TV space and, if they chose, could easily stir up trouble for Sky, Spark, Mediaworks, TVNZ and co.
In the UK, for example, Amazon paid a reported 90 million pounds for the right to stream 20 Premier League Football games a year for three years. Worryingly for broadcasters everywhere, the first ten games were livestreamed through Amazon Prime earlier this month and, according to Amazon, “millions of football fans watched the 10 matches livestreamed through its Prime Video platform on Tuesday and Wednesday night (December 3 & 4). Amazon said that both days set records for the most new sign-ups since the company launched its Prime subscription service in the UK in 2007.”
When live sport becomes a customer acquisition tool for an Internet giant, and isn’t judged on its own merits as a subscription-revenue-generator, it’s time to start worrying.
4 The New Zealand population is projected to reach 5 million in 2020.
Driven predominantly by immigration, the New Zealand population has increased at a significantly faster pace in recent years and is expected to reach the 5 million milestone early in 2020. The countries of origin of a majority of new immigrants: China and India. That statistic reinforces the need to ensure that your products and services appeal to a broad spectrum of the New Zealand ethnic and cultural community, not just the usual suspects.
5 Sacrificing single use plastic bags
Well, that was painless. Single use plastic bags were phased out in 2019, with barely a ripple. It is a salutary reminder that Kiwis today are no longer the conspicuous consumers of old. They are willing to make the necessary effort to change behaviours in support of worthy goals. We have moved on from greenwashing (activities designed to look good but contribute little) and consumers are now significantly more likely to support genuine efforts to deliver ethical, sustainable results.
6 Flexitarianism: the rise and rise of plant-based eating
Kiwi Flexitarians, people who have reduced (but not completely eliminated) their consumption of meat, have grown in number by 18% in the last year, according to the 2019 “Hungry for Plant-Based NZ Consumer Insights Report” conducted by Colmar Brunton. Over the same period, 24% of New Zealand meat eaters have reduced their meat consumption.
Those are sobering statistics but they don’t tell the full story. By 2030, U.S. demand for cow products is projected to fall by 50 percent and for dairy products by 85 percent according to the RethinkX analysis “Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030“.
Little wonder that experts are urging the NZ meat and dairy industries to plan carefully for an alternative future.
7 The threats and opportunities of 5G
5G has now begun to roll out around New Zealand and although it will take some time to reach critical mass in terms of network coverage, consumer adoption and widespread availability of appropriate devices, now is the time to begin preparation for the implications of 5G.
The technology, which offers much more data much faster, will expand the capability of mobile devices for users and will also provide more opportunities to harness the remote power of the Internet of Things. With greater speed, however, comes greater expectations – and an unwillingness to wait around if, for example, your website doesn’t load quickly enough.
5G will support more powerful applications such as augmented and virtual reality, which will put more pressure on retailers, marketers and entertainment providers to deliver enhanced experiences through 5G devices.
And commuting will begin to transform, especially on trains and buses, as consumers have access to more reliable, capable Internet services that deliver the full range of web functionality to their devices.
8 The power of the platform
Even without 5G, many entrepreneurial businesses have already been leveraging the Internet to offer products and services that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. We’re talking about the likes of Uber, Airbnb and Lime, to name a few. Now add in new players such as the Warehouse Group’s TheMarket (a virtual online mall but with the added benefit for its merchants of click and collect via 80 Warehouse Group stores around the country). Or check out anyspace.co.nz, a local start-up which takes the Airbnb approach to the rental of parking, storage or office space: anyspace links people and organisations who have unused capacity with those who have a need, usually at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage providers.
Are you leveraging the power of the Internet as effectively as you might, not just as an advertising medium? According to Google, whilst only 6% of all retail transactions happen on the Internet, 96% of all transactions START on the Internet.
9 Befriending Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant
Voice control is here, and growing more established every day. More than half of under 35s have used the technology in the past month, according to Hootsuite/We Are Social research. Whether that’s through their mobile devices or through devices such as the Google Home Hub or the Amazon Echo smart speakers (powered by Alexa), more and more people are speaking to machines and the machines are responding.
The implications for brands can be profound, especially as users become more comfortable with their electronic assistants and enable the devices to make purchases on their behalf. How do you convince Siri or Google Assistant to choose your brand of coffee rather than someone else’s? It’s not merely a theoretical question – already Alexa can shop on your behalf on Amazon, while in the United States Google Assistant has a shopper arrangement with Walmart.
10 The ever-increasing importance of video
As you have no doubt heard, video already matters more than ever (and will continue to do so in 2020).
Why? These statistics tell the story:
- Almost 50% of web users look for a video before visiting a store, says Google.
- Wyzowl says that 79% of consumers prefer watching video to reading about a product.
- And Hubspot says that 43% of consumers want to see more video content in the next 12 months.
- 84% of consumers have bought something after watching a video (Wyzowl).
11 What we all need to know about the new NZ Privacy Act
New privacy legislation, updating the 1993 privacy act, is wending its way through Parliament and is expected to become law in 2020.
Amongst the changes that you need to know about:
- Businesses will need to report serious privacy breaches. For example, if you experience a data breach that poses a risk of harm (eg leaked personal information is used in identity theft or published online), you must notify the people affected. Also, you must notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
- If someone requests personal information held by a business, the business cannot destroy the information in order to avoid providing it.
- Kiwi businesses using service providers based overseas, like cloud software, will need to make sure their providers are meeting New Zealand privacy laws.
12 The Increasing Importance of Customer Experience
We are seeing significant moves towards valuing experiences over possessions, driven by a variety of factors including the Uberisation of everything and the quest for a more sustainable, circular economy where everything that can be is recycled, reused or repurposed.
Content that was once purchased in physical form, such as books, CDs and DVDs, is now available through the likes of Kindle, Spotify and Netflix. Add in influencers such as Marie Kondo who encourage decluttering and depossessing and the trend is clear: consumers are now starting to seek experiential services rather than products and brands are responding accordingly.
Are you positioned to take advantage of an environment where experience is the most important aspect?
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Those are 12 of the trends that will have an impact on the year ahead. Want to know more? Check out our latest report, packed full with macrotrends and microtrends.
Our Marketing Insights & Trends NZ 2020 Presentation focusses in on some of the hottest and most important NZ marketing topics and trends for 2020 and beyond.
This comprehensive slide presentation is available for you to present to your clients and colleagues as a preview of what marketing trends to expect in 2020.
This presentation looks ahead at what marketers should expect and plan for in 2020 — based on local and global trends you may not yet have had the opportunity to examine — turning those forecasts into a comprehensive report & slide deck in PowerPoint format (with accompanying notes) – information that you can easily present to your team and your clients, bringing everyone up to speed on the latest New Zealand Marketing Insights as we accelerate into 2020. All presentations are unbranded, so you can add your own branding and comments.
Each presentation consists of at least 150 slides, dealing with as many key insights.
Prepare for 2020 with a comprehensive presentation to your team or your clients
Our NZ MARKETING INSIGHTS & TRENDS FOR 2020 presentation and slide deck will be released in January 2020 but we have a very special pre-Christmas offer saving you $100 if you pre-order today (see details below).
Some of the key topics featured include:
The first section of the presentation takes a look at what we can expect in 2020, globally and within New Zealand, from an economic and political perspective. Another election year in NZ, more international machinations.
Topics of note include:
- The New Zealand population will reach 5 million by 2020. What are the implications?
- Too many Kiwi marketers don’t believe we are ready for the new digital world. How can we prepare more effectively?
- Global economic trends are not encouraging, and New Zealand business confidence indicators are lagging. Should we be worried?
- IDC researchers estimate that by the end of 2020, more than 60% of New Zealand business-to-consumer organisations will have adopted Net Promoter Score as their leading success metric. Is that a good thing?
Consumers, in New Zealand as elsewhere, are constantly changing their behaviours, their attitudes and their preferences. We take a look at some of the macrotrends and microtrends that are influencing what we want and what we need, and the implications for marketers.
Amongst the Kiwi consumer trends we examine:
- goodbye to plastic bags and hello to a more sustainable environment where “do no harm” is taking precedence over convenience
- the hyper- personalisation of everything
- Millennials and Generation Z reinventing customer behaviours
- B2Me taking over from B2C
- cultural shifts reshaping consumer behaviour in seemingly contradictory ways
- the endless march of the sharing economy
- the growing adoption of click and collect
- the next step in subscription meal kits, with pre-prepared, ready-to-cook meals beginning to substitute for kits containing recipes-plus-all-ingredients
- plant-based meat replacements gathering momentum, soon to be joined by substitutes for fish
- medical apps putting the future of health care in the palms of patients’ hands
- consumers now want to know much more about the sources of products they buy, especially food and drinks
- they are more responsive to new products than they’ve ever been. The downside of that new attitude: 92% of consumers simply don’t consider themselves brand-loyal
- consumers are becoming more willing than ever to expand their comfort zones, push themselves to the limit with new experiences
- they are using social media to compete with and offer inspiration to their peers
Influencer marketing has gained a lot of buzz in 2018 and 2019. Will that continue in 2020, especially now that the most common currency, likes, seems to be evaporating into the ether on both Instagram and now Facebook? We review the possibilities.
We also take a look at recent research to determine exactly how influential these Kiwi micro-personalities actually are, and how they compare to others elsewhere in the world.
And we peek at upcoming influencer trends, including:
- the growing use of AI in influencer marketing
- expansion into more engaging content formats, including interactive and VR/AR
- more formal development of ambassador programs for influencers
- data-driven influencer campaigns
- more focus on storytelling
- more prominence for videos
- the emergence of TikTok and Twitch as influencer marketing channels
- thinking outside the ‘gram
Our Search analyses cover a wide range of subjects, including:
- Position zero, also known as the featured snippet at the top of a Google results page, represents the first search result that appear for a particular query. Are you the best answer to someone’s question?
- Google has now implemented mobile-first indexing for all searches through mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile-ready, it won’t be found.
- Social media is now a factor in search engine ranking. Better get your act together there as well as on your website.
- Voice search is going gangbusters, With ComScore predicting that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be by voice.
- Your search results will benefit if you dig deep and analyse the keywords in which your prospects are actually interested. So how do you do that? We share some actionable tips.
- And video continues to make a huge impact on search rankings.
Video continues to be white-hot, with more and more marketers adding online video to their list of must-have tools and techniques for 2020. Not all videos are created equal, however, and we look at the demand for Vertical Videos (thanks, Instagram), Square Videos (preferred by the social networks), Outstream Videos and other permutations and combinations now on offer.
Automation has given marketers an ever-increasing ability to personalise content on-the-fly, tailoring messages to both customers and prospects. As it turns out, consumers have noticed, they like it and they expect more and more messages to be customised just for them. In fact, research indicates that many consumers say that they are likely to ignore or abandon uncustomised messages in favour of more personal communications. But marketers struggle to find enough data to make meaningful customisation of their messages.
We look at the specific personalisation trends and opportunities in 2020, including real-time personalisation of videos and other multimedia offerings.
The new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in mid-2018, has cast a long shadow around the world. Many governments are actively considering reshaping their own legislation to mimic the European requirements and major data users such as Facebook and Google have evolved their own rules and regulations to ensure that they are compliant with GDPR. We examine the continuing implications for marketers in 2020 and look at the new NZ Privacy Act.
Driven in part by consumers’ migration to mobile devices (and the consequent implications for smaller file sizes and download speeds) and by the usual evolution of creative expression, we’re seeing a number of new trends in website and app design that will have a major influence in 2020.
Video and animation are becoming the design elements of choice, even with data size restrictions. We review what’s hot and what’s not for the year ahead.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are both staking a claim on consumer attention for the near future. So far,there’s one clear frontrunner: Augmented Reality only requires a mobile phone and the appropriate software, while VR still needs goggles and/or other accessories. Don’t expect that situation to change much in 2020 but keep an eye on the future as other technological developments speed the evolution.
We look at what you need to know about Artificial Intelligence, its uses and its possibilities in marketing.
In particular, you need to know:
- how Artificial Intelligence is currently being used in marketing
- Artificial Intelligence Tools that are available for you to use to improve your marketing operations
- planned and imminent developments for AI that may impact on your marketing effectiveness
- how AI is currently being used to assist consumers
- the implications (and the risks) of consumer uses of AI
Blockchain has had its reputation a little tarnished by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, although Facebook and its partners may change all that with its recently-announced Libre currency. Still, blockchain’s underlying technology has the potential to have a substantial impact on many industries, not least of which is marketing.
We review what’s currently hot for blockchain in the marketing and advertising arena, and help you to understand what it might mean for you.
The transformation of television from linear, scheduled content to smorgasbord, watch-what-you-want-whenever-you-want offerings continues at a frantic pace. Netflix’s position as dominant Subscription Video provider will be strenuously challenged in 2020 as new players Disney+ and Apple TV make their New Zealand debuts. We examine the implications, both for audiences and for marketers.
And we look at the lessons already learned through Spark Sport’s experience with the Rugby World Cup and what that means for the combination of live sport and streaming.
We delve into the latest developments in Social Media, covering Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
There’s a whole lot to cover, including:
- The latest statistics on social media usage in New Zealand.
- The move towards greater transparency in social media advertising, including the ability to view current advertising executions (a great competitive tool and a source of inspiration as you prepare your own social media advertising).
- A continuing crackdown on privacy and security, in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, alleged Russian hacking in the European introduction of GDPR restrictions on data sharing.
- Increased developments in Augmented Reality, as the technology expands beyond Snapchat filters and Pokémon games and into videos, live events and enhanced customer engagement.
- A new focus on news by social media platforms, all intended to get consumers to stay longer with their platform.
- Increased use of AI to refine audience segmentation and to combat fake news.
- The introduction of cryptocurrency (as announced by Facebook with its Libra initiative), especially intended to serve as a purchasing mechanism for products and services advertised on Facebook.
- Increased capabilities for Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
- Growth in social media as a search engine, especially for visual search and product research.
- Consolidation of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp connectivity, including the ability to share messages across both platforms.
- Video live-streaming becomes an essential element of much social media marketing.
- The introduction of more transactional services to social media, as more and more WeChat (China) innovations are copied and introduced to the West.
- Preparing for new generational trends, as Gen Z begins to intrude on the social territory already carved out by the millennials.
Next we turn our attention to Experiences, review their importance (especially for millennials) and run through upcoming major events for the year.
We review the big movie titles that will attract the most attention during 2020.
And we examine the New Zealand media trends expected to impact on marketers in 2020.
But Wait, There’s More
A roundup of other key marketing technology trends follows, including Programmatic Advertising (still flourishing despite the closure of KPEX).
We consider the transformative effects of 5G cellular.
And we close with a brief look at other Future Technology trends that will impact in later years.
Personal Use and Agency Use Rights
This NZ MARKETING INSIGHTS & TRENDS FOR 2020 report, like all our Marketing Insights presentations, comes with personal use and agency use rights: you can present these reports to your own team and to your clients and prospects, bringing everyone up to speed on the latest marketing insights and trends as we accelerate into 2020. All presentations are unbranded, so you can add your own branding and comments.
All of our presentations in this Marketing Insights series consist of at least 150 slides, dealing with as many key insights.
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ABOUT THE REPORT
Oh, in case you’re wondering who we are to be preparing such a report: the NZ MARKETING INSIGHTS & TRENDS FOR 2020 report & slide deck has been prepared (like its predecessor reports on 2017, 2018 & 2019) by Michael Carney, long-time adman, author, media director and strategic planning director. Michael is also the creator/training director of Netmarketing Courses, which provides online training across a wide range of digital marketing disciplines. See our About page for more.
