Ask an Agency...volume 12

What industry trends are you embracing as an agency when working with brands/clients, and what's your top industry predictions for 2024?

Effectiveness of marketing budget 

2023 has been a challenging year with so many unknowns around the economy and the impact of the global disruption being felt by everyone, so I expect 2024 to be a year of cautiousness,  in particular brands seeking more effectiveness of marketing spend.  

2024 will be all about working smarter, not harder, and we’re working with our clients ahead of the new year to think more broadly around their challenges, moving away from tactical and reactive strategies to more considered roadmaps, that will allow for efficiencies to be made throughout the year. 

Having said that, we’re going to see more reliance on data-driven activities that can be quickly adapted and changed to suit the circumstances and market conditions. As an agency, this is something we’ve become accustomed to, having clients across several sectors that have been impacted by global events since COVID-19.

 AI and automation 

There’s no doubt that AI is becoming ever more prevalent in the day-to-day for marketers looking to make efficiencies, but in a world increasingly dominated by tech and algorithms, we need to ensure that emotion and human ability play the starring role in any output for our clients and it’s something we’re taking very seriously at TrunkBBI.  

It’s more important than ever that marketers have clear policies and guidelines in place to encourage safe use of AI platforms, as it’s not a case of whether marketers will use AI, it’s a case of how they will use it. AI is becoming integrated with day-to-day work, at TrunkBBI our staff is using AI to aid efficiencies such as helping categorise and cluster keyword lists and to help assess keywords and search terms to help build out content briefs based on insights within our SEO teams. Similarly, across PR and content teams AI is often used to research topics, headline inspiration and finding new niche publications for outreach. 

We’re working with our clients to determine clear boundaries around AI usage in our work. We want to ensure a fully transparent and open dialogue as the technology continues to become more advanced, but we’re being realistic in our approach. It isn’t going anywhere and now it’s about making the most of it, balancing human connection with the mind-blowing capabilities.  

At TrunkBBI, we have designed and built our own proprietary AI tool, Ay Up, that uses the technology behind ChatGPT 4 by interacting with the OpenAI API. We’ve built into it new features, which allow our teams to utilise the power of the GPT models, as well as saving time in the routine tasks we’re using it for. We’ve done this by first understanding what our teams are using ChatGPT for and then designing our own ‘prompts’ which allow for the  speed and flexibility on top of ChatGPT.

We originally did this to allow more control over what information is being given to ChatGPT. There are security options to ensure data inputted into ChatGPT isn’t used by funnelling it through our company account. We can be assured that we know the data will not be put into future training models.

After some months of use, we will have further information on how this is being used and the roadmap for the future. This includes further integration with different generational AI systems and fine tuning GPT around the main tasks we will be using it for.

 Loyalty and reward 

Spending habits and behaviours are expected to shift again in 2024, with buying decisions being driven by what consumers constitute as value for money. Rewarding customers for their loyalty is going to be key in the next 12 months and simply giving a discount isn’t going to be enough.  

We work with a few hospitality businesses, pub companies and restaurant chains, and we’re seeing more demand for digital redemption and loyalty journeys that transcend both in venue and out of it to drive footfall, as the race to win consumers over competitors heats up.  

Internally we have created full circle redemption platforms which allow us to track the complete journey through to the final purchase. This allows us to give our clients the full view of analytics after any given campaign which has proven to be valuable data in understanding ROI.

Sustainability and CSR 

Sustainability and social responsibility is another theme that will continue into 2024 at full speed, and we’ll be encouraging our clients to consider how they proactively address environmental challenges head on. This year has shown us that it is not enough for brands to be passive on the matter, and instead they must innovate and present solutions to their consumers that are both authentic and impactful to win.

That's us signing off for the year on this feature. We've got some more priceless gems and top tips coming your way in 2024. In the meantime, if you'd like to be featured, drop us a line!