Five Brand Strategy Trends to Watch in 2020

Feb 5, 2020 | Digital

Learn How Our Team Can Help Your Organization Navigate the Latest Trends

At Gavin, a new year brings fresh innovations, big ideas and evolving client strategies to the forefront of our minds.

With the last decade rapidly fading into the rearview mirror, an entirely new one presents itself. This is a pivotal time for your organization to stop and consider what’s on the horizon for public relations, digital marketing, design and brand communications strategies.

Here are five trends that Gavin’s team of brand strategists have identified that can improve your organization’s day-to-day efforts in 2022-2023.

Internal Communications

With brands becoming more cognizant to the value of internal communications in their strategic growth plans, a demand to implement voice and persona techniques traditionally used for external communications will begin to rise for internal use.

As organizations aim for consistency in message delivery to improve employee engagement, they will need to establish brand advocates. Ramping up internal communications efforts is a strategic way to establish and maintain the loyalty necessary to achieve this.

Content Control

Modern public relations strategies are reliant on a multilayered approach. The dominance of social media and other digital trends that have brought forth forms of self-generated content have enabled public relations practices to evolve beyond relying on earned media as the primary way to share news.

In 2020, authenticity will be at the bedrock of a successful PR and communications plan. This makes leveraging key individuals and stories crucial among brand efforts to evolve and reach their target audience.

Beyond enabling brand storytelling, independent media content contributes to advancing awareness and easing expansion into new markets by allowing brands to portray themselves to new audiences. Op-eds are a catalyst to achieving this as they provide a platform for brands to flex their expertise, culture and core values.

Multimedia content, including podcasts and videos, have also become great tools to take control of and enhance your content. Podcasts will continue to spike in popularity as they are an efficient way to demonstrate expertise and boost your organization’s influence.

Crises Are Here to Stay

From hashtags gone haywire to failed attempts at being trendy social media crises will continue to pressure brands to align with the social values of consumers and punish them when they don’t.

This may be a result of the power of social media, as social activism will continue disrupting organizations’ digital marketing strategy and communication efforts across platforms, specifically Twitter, causing appropriate crisis communications plans to be essential.

With an overall increase in crises expected this year, many companies are staying ahead of the curve by creating concrete communications plans to proactively address potential crisis situations. Identifying a plan of action to execute in the event of a crisis will help brands survive and thrive when the situation concludes.

Brand Identity will Revolve Around Typography­­

While some of the world’s most iconic brands achieved recognition through pictorial mark logos (think of Apple or Twitter), typography is expected to surge in relevance to overall brand identity this year.

Compositional use of elaborate or indulgent typographic components, including geometric shapes, flowers, gradients, outlines and even blurry effects will take centerstage. Gavin’s own logo evolved according to the importance of typography to brand identity.

The Need for Speed

Patience for lagging load times is nonexistent across the digital landscape, making efficient website speed one of the top digital trends now and throughout the foreseeable future. Lagging speeds repel site visitors and sabotage conversion rates, which can diminish search engine ranking and negatively impact sales long-term.

Slow website load times can result from page content weighing it down. Heavy content can include photos, videos and external integrations like Mailchimp. This makes it imperative for a competent digital marketing strategy to balance creative, visually compelling site elements with those that are performance based, deliver a satisfactory user experience and produce leads.

Gavin’s experience equips us with expert insight into the direction digital trends are heading, allowing us to make accurate predictions that can better support our clients in the execution of their strategies.

Are you ready to use these trends to optimize your business? Talk to Gavin today.