The key trends in marketing production for 2024

Forecasting for the year ahead is a tricky business these days. It’s impossible to predict what wars, pandemics or financial crises might lie around the corner, or the impact they’ll have on the global economy.

We can, however, be fairly confident that the challenging environment for brands looks set to continue through 2024, so it’s crucial to stay on top of trends that will help drive more value from marketing activity while also keeping costs in check. Here, Tag’s head of business development for EMEA, Joe Holmes, highlights three key production trends set to redefine how marketers and their partner agencies create campaigns to best effect in the year ahead.

1. ‘True’ personalisation

Personalisation has long been a buzzword within marketing, but until now it has been based on generic audience mapping, with brands using data to make broad assumptions. For example, tailoring in-store digital content based on the weather outside. It’s clever. But the real challenge for marketers lies in reaching that specific customer, delivering the message they want and need in that moment, and relating that back to the brand’s product or service. In other words, ‘true’ personalisation.

This is starting to happen, and we will see it gather pace in 2024. Marketers are beginning to connect media insights with production – a seismic development which underpins Tag’s recent integration into the Dentsu agency network. Accessing insights based on how content and campaigns are performing has long been possible but tapping into that next level of insight – knowing whether the customer clicked or made a purchase ­– has proved elusive. Until now.

The opportunity to improve content effectiveness based on this pivotal feedback is huge. For too long, there has been a disconnect between media and production, resulting in a staggering amount of content being wasted. Last year, Forrester stated that within the B2B world an estimated 65% of the content marketing assets produced go unused because they are ‘irrelevant’.

This is often due to a lack of cohesion between media and production. Operating in siloes limits visibility, restricting the insight needed to react to the optimisation signals of a key audience – such as clicking on a particular link or engaging with the brand in a certain way. This stifles the opportunity to continuously test and learn.

For too long, there has been a disconnect between media and production, resulting in a staggering amount of content being wasted.

By bringing media and production together, a common taxonomy of all available assets can be created, enabling tracking and measurement, and informing future content.

Marrying these two facets also underpins effective dynamic creative optimisation (DCO), which uses real-time data to inform and optimise creative. Done well, DCO can deliver highly effective content personalisation at scale. DCO also enables the re-use of assets, giving marketers the ability to amplify existing content based on nuances and learnings. This supports a much more sustainable production process (see the sustainability trend, below), while a closed loop ecosystem allows reporting on content usage as well as in-market results. Continuous feedback empowers brands to move faster and be smarter, informing the next campaign with real-life insights, and facilitating execution on a large scale.

As consumers increasingly demand true personalisation, and brands strive to deliver it, smashing siloes and integrating media and production is a must. With the continued increase in channels and the subsequent need for more content, this coupling also helps advertisers to better justify their marketing spend and deliver a return.

2. AI with tangible value

There is a lot of hot air when it comes to AI. It has risen to the top of the list in almost every client conversation in 2023. Agencies are advising clients to work with ’tangible’ AI, focusing on how it can power every solution to be smarter and faster, but they’re often doing it incorrectly.

Too many companies are trying to spin a silver-bullet AI story and dazzle brands. But in the coming year we will see more companies cutting through this din. The chat will be about AI that delivers a commercial benefit; that is the current void. There is a lot of good theory out there, but the missing part is, how does that help clients from a financial standpoint?

All too often, marketers are seduced by the sexy concepts surrounding AI – input a few words and a powerful asset will be created in seconds. That stuff looks amazing, but it is the fundamental building blocks of AI which are needed, and the less shiny AI applications are already delivering. Take AI translation, AI voiceovers, AI asset tagging: these are real, tangible uses that we can touch and see, and which, importantly, are already impacting the bottom line for clients.

More and more advertisers will start asking for the commercial deliverables of AI to be integrated into media proposals. It’s not just about vision and theory – companies want to know about spend and return, and that demand will grow rapidly.

3. Sustainable production

Sustainability is a huge focus for Tag, and it will continue to gather pace in the industry. One key innovation is virtual production (VP), of which we are big advocates, and in which the UK is a global pioneer. VP combines traditional physical shoot production methods with digital techniques to create authentic video content. It uses 3D virtual environments and LED screens, giving brands the ability to quickly build and swap out multiple virtual environments. Critically, it also enables brands to reduce greenhouse emissions by eliminating air travel, as well as bypassing the need to transport equipment by road and use multiple locations and facilities.

VP speeds up production time considerably and uses fewer resources, thereby reducing costs. It also gives brands maximum creative control, allowing them to develop repeatable and scalable assets to adapt and repurpose. It works particularly well for companies such as alcohol or beauty brands, for example, which have products that are easily repeatable.

Tag works with brands early in the consultation phase to advise and guide on whether VP is the right approach for their needs. We are also giving comparisons to more and more clients, detailing the spend, carbon emissions, time and investment for traditional shoots, and weighing this up against VP. This allows brands to quickly assess the most effective method for them.

Brands are under pressure – internally and externally – to create only what they need. Sustainability will only become more imperative.

Product-led businesses are also preparing for the evolution of web 3.0 and the plethora of virtual environments for which they will need to create content. Integrating these production solutions offers a quick, dynamic way for brands to produce campaigns and include their products in any environment, helping them to be a lot more sustainable.

We have seen a lot of brands digitising product lines as well, enabling them to generate multiple versions of a product consistently. This avoids the need to create complex production sets. A computer-generated (CG) environment allows advertisers to augment stills and video at the click of a button, adding shadow or light or movement, for example, rather than having to carry out a re-shoot.

We are seeing a big shift towards digitisation among clients spanning automotive, luxury and retail. It enables them to be more creative while reducing their carbon footprint, and budget.

Brands are under pressure – internally and externally – to create only what they need. Sustainability will only become more imperative.

Technology has the potential to act as a powerful enabler for marketers in 2024, but only by truly understanding an individual brand and its audience can it be applied to best effect. The smartest marketers will be unwavering about how technology can better meet their company’s needs – and deliver a return – and not be seduced by the hype.