There have been many blogs and communities discussing the big trends for marketing in 2010 and as you’d imagine there has been all kinds of suggestions, which essentially concentrate on the traditional model of our capitalist world and rather ignore the fact that things have fundamentally changed.

Many commenters have forgotten what has happened in the last 18 months and in my mind think it will just go back to service as normal. I don’t agree with this. I feel that something has changed; there is a grassroots change in attitude to our so-called “masters”, most especially seen in the attitudes to Politicians and Bankers and the change comes out of the dislike of “greed”. It is only a matter of time before this is reflected throughout society and therefore into our brands and most especially the brands we have always trusted; those that have been sacrosanct for years will become open to intense scrutiny beyond what they are marketing and into the honesty and integrity of the brand and its messaging.

Honesty, trust and integrity are for me the key components of a new demand from the consumer to be open about what you are selling. We know that products contain certain things that are bad fro us; stop pretending these ingredients aren’t in there!
This is most especially pertinent to all brands which resonate with children or families, either as consumersor influencers, who are going to demand their favourite brands “do the right thing”, otherwise they risk the chance of being “old” brands and in the children’s world this can happen very quickly.

I was speaking to a stunningly interesting guy the other day who runs a fascinating company called CSR Plus and he has been involved in many CSR projects with government and brands and he is quick to point out that “integrity” is the ethos he is expected to deliver in all his campaigns; this isn’t coming from the client but from the end-user. We should learn from this.

Things are afoot. 2010 is the year of honesty and we’ll all be better off for it!

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