The biggest marketing challenges this year will be to stay calm, focused, and to be obsessed with the only one that matters: Your customer!

However, there are many ever-changing luxury branding trends. Here are the most up to date luxury branding trends of the year. Check back for more updates to come! Although this should have been ingrained in every marketer´s DNA for years, however, with all the data, tech, and buzzwords flying around, one of the biggest marketing challenges of 2019 will be to stay calm, focused, and to be obsessed with the only one that matters: Your customer!

Omnichannel marketing, i.e., the ability to offer a continuous brand experience across shopping formats and devices, has in recent years been mostly interrupted and poorly delivered offline: When shoppers are in brick-and-mortar stores and face demotivated (or no) staff, waste time standing in line, do not find the products they´re looking for, feel not stimulated to buy – or even worse – do not have the impression of being welcome and appreciated. In an era of ever-increasing consumer emancipation and consumer co-creation, the democratization of media, interactive experiences, fast speed and high complexity of always new trial and error (product) concepts, a major sweet spot for successful marketers lies in the intersection of human creativity and digital mastery.

In 2019 top marketers will permanently and comprehensively tie back business and marketing objectives and actions to revenue, profit, customer engagement, retention, and satisfaction. In 2019 the best marketing departments will have performance-based scorecards in place which measure and analyze, e.g., ROI of core business drivers like clicks, signups, downloads, purchases, stalls, etc. and based on these will conduct weekly and monthly marketing reviews. Marketing departments will automate repetitive tasks such as website updates, mobile campaigns, emails, newsletter marketing, social media, etc. to simplify, to scale, and to orchestrate marketing campaigns within a holistic CRM strategy across multiple channels.

Automation platforms and services like Oracle´s Eloqua, Marketo or Hubspot, have become already more intuitive and affordable. When it comes to the number of connected devices, which form the basis of the Internet of Things (IoT), the current count is somewhere between Gartner´s estimated 6.4 billion (which doesn’t include smartphones, tablets, and computers) and IHS’s estimate of 17.7 billion (with all such devices added). Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no science fiction (any longer).

Today AI technologies – such as deep learning, language processing, causal reasoning, machine learning, robotics, etc. – are used almost everywhere. They create insights from data and then act automatically on them. In consequence, every marketer should have at least a basic understanding of the leading AI technologies and how they can help her to make the company´s products and services better. Still propelled by the phenomenal success of Pokémon GO, in 2019 we’ll see the accelerated rise of Augmented and Virtual Reality (VR).

Although in the meantime enthusiasm for Pokémon GO has significantly slowed down, without a doubt it has proved that apps are far from dead or would not be working. It also underlined that brands and developers would need to team up more effectively to develop content that people find engaging and love.PISD stands for Personalized, Immersive, Short-Lived, and Dense content forms. Mass customization will fully transform into personalization in 2019 by reaching different types of audience members (or even individuals in its purest form) based on their behavior, preferences, and habits. 94% of executives consider delivering personalization as critical or essential to reach customers according to a Forrester/PwC study.

One of the significant trends and buzzwords for 2019: Native advertising is a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would be otherwise seen in the work of the platform’s editorial staff. The word “native” refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appears on the platform. According to Brightcove´s global survey The Science of Social Video: Turning Views into Value report, 74% of consumers say there is a connection between watching a video and their purchasing decision-making process; with the average consumer now watching 49 minutes of social video every day. That´s why video content will continue to rock, e.g., with 360° experiences which were triggered some years ago by GoPro´s spherical videos.

Some months ago, UK fashion company Ted Baker released in collaboration with Guy Ritchie “Mission Impeccable” a crime-meets-couture-themed thriller – on its homepage, etc. The movies were entirely shoppable. Viewers could add items to their online carts with a simple click. Already in September 2015, the German Online Fashion company Zalando celebrated its MobileFirst Day when it presented multiple mobile-first initiatives with various partners and vendors (Facebook, Instagram, Uber) and tried making its almost 10,000 coworkers think and support “Mobile First.” According to the Digital News report, 47% of online consumers use ad blockers. Frankly, this number is expected to continue growing as consumers get savvier about protecting themselves from ads.

So, if your company isn’t utilizing influencer marketing yet, you better get started. Very quickly! While “influencers” always have been an essential element in marketing, they’re quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach customers and clients. That’s especially true on social media. Here are some thoughts on the marketing organization of the future. Many (consultancies) are suggesting that the (digital) transformation of marketing should be led by a Chief Digital Officer (CDO). I strongly disagree.

If your CMO and your marketing team are not ready (yet) to tackle related challenges and tasks, then you as leaders better support and train/coach them ASAP, instead of hiding your strategic and organizational weaknesses behind the function of a CDO. It should not come as a surprise that for many brands the individual trust levels are low. In recent years, there have been numerous examples of consumers being misled by brands in sectors like food, beauty, automotive, and the technology sector. Before the internet age, brands could get away with these sorts of things quickly, but now—luckily for customers—it’s not as easy.