From Ukraine to Spain, a Selection of Trend Predictions from Serviceplan

Ukrainian marketing is increasingly integrating into the global market. Therefore, in 2018 we will see different adaptations and interpretations of global communication trends at local level.

First, Big Data. Personal data is becoming an increasingly promising platform for transactions between brands and consumers in Ukraine. The coming year will increase the number of Big Data supporters among local market players.

The trend of personalised content will also continue its rise. During the last years Ukrainian business has been increasingly using advantages of direct online dialog with its consumers.

Smartphone-isation is one of the reasons why video on the go is becoming more and more popular. In 2018 online video content will remain preferable and influential communication channel for Ukrainian brands.

In the coming year Ukrainians will go on ignoring offline and online advertising successfully. The reply for this stable tendency will be native advertising that will focus on search for the most sophisticated ways of integration into popular media content.

Niche bloggers will play the increasing role in communications in 2018. Being opinion leaders for narrow online audiences, they can effectively use all advantages of personalized content and online video.

Also the increasing role of corporate blogs in marketing communications should be mentioned. An opportunity to communicate with consumers directly and to respond to changes in consumer demand quickly is an instrument that Ukrainian brands only begin to fully benefit from.

2017 was a boom for live temporary video users, thanks to Facebook Live, Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories. 2018 is looking to be the year of the temporary video for brands. It is no longer necessary to invest in large productions, these formats have more real, spontaneous and live content. This, together with the surge in influencers, means that brands don’t even need to create the content: it is the third parties who generate it, with the relevance that users demand and the brand only needing to manage promotion. On Instagram we are already seeing this type of strategy in that brands promote influencers’ posts in which their products are featured. 

Although these three terms are nothing new, 2018 is looking to be a year of progress in this sense. The evolution of artificial intelligence so that machines learn and “make decisions” will be relevant for certain business models. With the rise in machine learning within the industry, the processes are increasingly efficient, there is an increase in quality and the productivity of some businesses since they are able to “control” faults within virtual environments.

2018 is going to be the year of machine learning, especially in the field of consumer segmentation and improvement of automated message personalisation processes. Thanks to marketing leaders from Silicon Valley, learning algorithms are already in widespread use. However, we are entering a new stage in the application of these mechanisms beyond advertising systems like Adwords, Doubleclick and Facebook. 

Marketers are getting better at gathering and integrating user information all the time. Their allies include global giants like Google. A good example of this is Google's partnership with Salesforce, announced in November of this year, which, in addition to its positive impact on the amount of information collected, will also affect its quality.

The challenge for agencies and marketers alike is to put their own analytical capabilities up against those of machines—we are, in the end, susceptible to errors, and with such a large amount of data and variables, as well as the complexity of users' paths to purchase, the risk of mistakes increases. In order to draw conclusions quickly enough and then apply them in the real optimisation of user experience, we need to put more emphasis on technology and especially on the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence.

The Middle East consumer’s appetite for luxury has grown insatiable, at best gluttonous, so much so that online luxury malls, open 24/7, are now an emerging powerhouse. Ounass, “The Definitive Home of Luxury” from retail giant Al Tayer Group promises free two-hour delivery within Dubai, while The Modist, “The First Ever Luxury Modest Fashion Destination” launched from a formidable start-up promises a platform that includes a personal shopping and styling team, 24/7 customer concierge service, and same-day delivery in the Middle East. Both are a direct response to Net-A-Porter’s success in a region which now represents an average order value 50% higher than the rest of the world. But digital retail is only half the luxury equation in the Middle East. Tangible experiences – in the form of brick and mortar stores clobbered up in “luxury wings” of prominent malls are now co-existing with pop-ups the magnitude, detail, and scale of actual retail stores. “Tan-gital” is the tight path between exclusive, physical on-ground experiences and the trend of forming luxury malls online. A trend with a win-win situation?