To see the future of marketing, ask the next generation

Today’s junior mar­keters are tomorrow’s CMOs. As new trends emerge and oth­ers evolve, these 20-some­things offer a unique per­spec­tive on their generation’s inter­ac­tions with the indus­try, pro­vid­ing their boss­es with unri­valled insights.

Many CMOs are increas­ing­ly tak­ing advan­tage. Research from dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence plat­form Opti­mize­ly shows three-quar­ters (76%) of junior mar­keters said their opin­ion was val­ued by senior team mem­bers, while 86% said they have the free­dom to try new things.

“They are the ones like­ly to shape the future of UK mar­ket­ing,” says Kirsten Alle­gri Williams, CMO of Opti­mize­ly. “Exper­i­men­ta­tion prac­tice will absolute­ly help advance their careers, along with their enthu­si­asm, and fresh think­ing. It’s vital senior team mem­bers embrace this.”

Skills are also chang­ing, sug­gests Chris Cur­rey, direc­tor of dig­i­tal & mar­ket­ing recruit­ment spe­cial­ists Dig­i­tal Ton­ic. Good copy­writ­ing and proof­read­ing abil­i­ties are in demand due to increas­es in con­tent mar­ket­ing, while strong numer­i­cal skills help derive insights from data. 

PPC, SEO and mar­ket­ing automa­tion are also impor­tant now, Cur­rey says. Very few young mar­keters are being giv­en expe­ri­ence with inbound mar­ket­ing, lead gen­er­a­tion, and account-based mar­ket­ing, he admits.

Employ­ers are notic­ing that recent grad­u­ates are being taught with “too strong a focus on social media”, Cur­rey says. Skills that will be rel­e­vant lat­er in their careers – like strat­e­gy, plan­ning and devel­op­ing mar­ket­ing plans – should be less of a pri­or­i­ty ini­tial­ly com­pared to learn­ing hands-on tools.

Relevance, value and sustainability  

Junior mar­keters are filled with ideas and sug­ges­tions for today’s CMOs on how the indus­try will or should change and the cam­paign mes­sages that should be con­sid­ered.

Liv Jump, 26, is assis­tant brand man­ag­er of own brand mar­ket­ing at M&S Food and cur­rent­ly leads its ‘Cel­e­brat­ing 30 Years of Per­cy Pig’ cam­paign. She has worked in mar­ket­ing for four years. She believes the future will see a focus on val­ue, per­son­al­i­sa­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. 

“Think­ing about the cur­rent cus­tomer mind­set, val­ue is more impor­tant than ever and the empha­sis will only grow,” she says. “Cus­tomers want a fair price or great deal, but with­out com­pro­mis­ing on qual­i­ty. Mar­ket­ing needs to be more rel­e­vant to more peo­ple 100% of the time to be suc­cess­ful.” 

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is also crit­i­cal, Jump adds, whether through pack­ag­ing, point of sale or new prod­uct devel­op­ment. Cus­tomers want to hear “how busi­ness­es are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence”.

Look­ing to the future, she expects insight to play a key role, along with bold, on-trend and reac­tive mar­ket­ing. Her sug­ges­tion to today’s mar­ket­ing lead­ers is inspired by advice from her own CMO Shar­ry Cra­mond: “When you think you’ve pushed all bound­aries, push it a lit­tle more and you’ll find the mag­ic.”

Jump is per­son­al­ly attract­ed to cam­paigns with mean­ing and rel­e­vance, and she high­lights the impor­tance of social media for her peers. “Whether shar­ing fun­ny memes, fol­low­ing brands direct­ly on Insta­gram, or con­sum­ing prod­ucts through influ­encer mar­ket­ing, it makes sense for brands to mar­ket on there. The key is sharable con­tent that will gen­er­ate rich engage­ment,” she advis­es.

Embracing feedback

Lau­ren Fletch­er, 24, has worked in mar­ket­ing for two years and is cur­rent­ly social media exec­u­tive at Love­honey. She believes influ­encer mar­ket­ing will “begin to bleed more and more into oth­er mar­ket­ing chan­nels”, with influ­encers firm­ly replac­ing celebri­ties as the faces of brands.

The abil­i­ty to adapt quick­ly is now cru­cial, she says. Video edit­ing skills are also impor­tant, as “almost every plat­form is requir­ing video con­tent.” 

Fletch­er sees mar­ket­ing becom­ing “less obvi­ous­ly com­mer­cial”. Thought lead­er­ship and prov­ing your­self “as an over­all ‘good’ brand” will be crit­i­cal.

What’s her advice for CMOs? “Talk to and lis­ten to low­er-lev­el staff, espe­cial­ly those in con­sumer-direct mar­ket­ing roles. We hear feed­back direct­ly from the con­sumers and social media users which is super valu­able and can help shape the over­all mar­ket­ing direc­tion.” 

Fletch­er says her gen­er­a­tion prizes authen­tic and hon­est mar­ket­ing, with her peers now “a lot more con­scious of any twist­ing of the truth or unau­then­tic trend-hop­ping”. 

She also points to the impor­tance of diver­si­ty. “As much as show­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion on your chan­nels is impor­tant, you need to have diverse peo­ple with­in your teams as well. If you’re doing mar­ket­ing about a cer­tain minor­i­ty, you need to make sure peo­ple from that minor­i­ty are con­tribut­ing, even if it’s on a con­sul­tan­cy basis — and make sure they’re get­ting paid for it.”

Technological advances

Tana­ka Bofu is a grad­u­ate cre­ative strate­gist at agency Armadil­lo. He believes behav­iour­al design – mar­ket­ing and design work­ing togeth­er to cre­ate behav­iour change – is now a key focus. “Good design can real­ly help with the whole of the mar­ket­ing process and should be involved at every stage,” he sug­gests.

The 24-year-old, who has worked in mar­ket­ing for eight months, thinks it’s imper­a­tive to build trust between the cus­tomer and the brand. “In the loy­al­ty space, to say ‘we are using your infor­ma­tion safe­ly, but also mak­ing it work for you’ is such an impor­tant mes­sage.” 

Bofu high­lights AI and par­tic­u­lar­ly aug­ment­ed real­i­ty as mar­ket­ing tech­nolo­gies to watch, with the lat­ter using blank bill­boards so cam­paigns are only vis­i­ble through AR. The meta­verse will also be inter­est­ing, he sug­gests, “because brands won’t be com­pet­ing for the same phys­i­cal space any­more; there will always be more vir­tu­al space that can be cre­at­ed.”

How­ev­er, reflect­ing on his own expe­ri­ence, Bofu advis­es oth­ers enter­ing the indus­try to think about the poten­tial of first-par­ty data, some­thing at the core of every cam­paign at his agency. “We didn’t go into data in detail in my degrees, def­i­nite­ly not the ter­mi­nol­o­gy and poten­tial. That’s some­thing that fas­ci­nates me,” he says.

And although Bofu believes mar­ket­ing is improv­ing when it comes to diver­si­ty and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, includ­ing by focus­ing on peo­ple from less afflu­ent back­grounds, he says there are still bar­ri­ers. “My par­ents work in the NHS so I had no mar­ket­ing role mod­els. I’d like to hear more about the process of get­ting into mar­ket­ing, not just see­ing peo­ple in mar­ket­ing posi­tions.”

Mentoring opportunities

Han­nah Elliott, mar­ket­ing assis­tant at Boost Drinks, sug­gests match­ing new junior mar­keters with employ­ees from dif­fer­ent depart­ments or more senior roles. This would offer edu­ca­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and pro­vide a neu­tral sound­ing board for advice. Greater indus­try net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties should also be avail­able, she believes. 

The 27-year-old has worked in mar­ket­ing for four years. She believes reac­tive­ness is now as much of a core skill as cre­ativ­i­ty, point­ing to ‘brandter’, or ban­ter focused on brands. “As we con­tin­ue into an uncer­tain future, every­one enjoys see­ing brandter on Twit­ter; viral pos­i­tive com­ments make you feel good and make you engage with the brand. The abil­i­ty to talk and react with­in your brand val­ues, direct­ly to your con­sumers is mas­sive. Doing it at speed and being first, is even bet­ter,” Elliott explains.

Per­son­al­ly, Elliott feels she gets to know a brand best through how it com­mu­ni­cates on social; along­side a sup­port­ing mar­ket­ing cam­paign, this gains her trust and inspires her. “It used to be about hav­ing a web­site, then it was an app, now it’s a Tik­Tok chan­nel. What’s next?” 

This ques­tion per­plex­es CMOs. But as Elliott explains: “It’s not just juniors who can learn from senior mar­ke­teers, in fact I’m often asked what’s the lat­est trend on social media, what are Gen Z con­sum­ing in cul­ture and who’s the new big celebri­ty tal­ent we should be work­ing with?”