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GERMANY – Data, personalization and lots of humanity amongst the 2016 IMEX trends
Time to get ready for a successful year in an ever-changing world. And amongst the countless market studies published these days, the IMEX team made a selection of trends affecting our industry.
The trend of Personalization, already well under way for companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonalds and British Airways, will accelerate. UK marketing title The Drum calls it “one of the hottest topics in today’s marketing industry “. Nowadays consumers are living seamlessly across different devices and platforms and expect a highly personalized experience from brands. And, according to Gartner, this trend will continue to grow. People like to be treated as individuals, whether as an employee or a consumer. It’s time for events to be really tailor-made.
Obvious complement of personalization, data intelligence will be a hot topic. Data gathering and analytics that drill down into the behaviors of individuals and groups are essential to personalization strategies, as IMEX reminds us.
In an ever more technological world, the continuing growth of the meetings industry reflects the essential need for F2F contact. Similarly, in contrast to the data driven approach, marketing expert Alan Hart, founder of marketing consultancy avidimpact.com, predicts that “being human will return to marketing” because “consumers want to be inspired and have meaningful and personal connections with brands in order to being convinced to buy products and services”.
Last but not least, the importance of the Asian region is endorsed by the latest annual American Express meetings and events industry report which says that “meetings spending is rising globally, led by the Asia Pacific region with 2.1 per cent growth expected“.
(eventoplus.com)