Marketing is all about Creating a New Reality

With social media and tech taking consumption of content through new leaps and bounds, we are beyond the age of change and revolution. Those classrooms that teach disciples of traditional marketing are an adequate lesson in history of learning the fundamentals of what makes audiences tick. But in a day and age when tech is as much of a new reality as reality itself, there are 4 trends that can be classified as marketing. Which are in fact, removing customers from their existing reality and enabling them to enter a new one, where they interact seamlessly with brands and are fundamentally entertained in a new world.

Is marketing now all about creating a new, distant and distinct reality?

Live Video

Jump on an Instagram live video and you can see people interacting with you in real time, with bubbling hearts and comments throughout. Have a live interview, a face-on-face chat with friends and followers, or showcase your life. It’s kind of what YouTube was built on – to capture an unfiltered life, until it became the launchpad of everything NOT TV. A trend started by Twitter’s Periscope, Facebook Live is next on the band wagon. Millennials love video content because it is unedited and untarnished. It offers a reality of someone else, and many times, a fun, engaging and aspirational reality.

Augmented Reality

Just the technical word for Snapchat filters that alter the perceived image of a person. Their first filter was a puking rainbow meant for the youth, but now it has transformed into paid brand filters that can do as little as change your face for the season, or apply makeup to try on a new beauty brand’s launch.Pokémon Go took the augmented reality principle and turned it into a majorly viral app. The opportunity for marketers is to connect to their audiences with experiences and product demos of sorts, in fun and alternative ways. With 75% of millennials exhibiting an interest, it seems that our own reality is too plain after all.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality encourages engagement with a unique and multi dimensional experience that can work with literally any brand or service. From HR office tours, to demos of new products, to trailers of movies to product launches, I’ve seen it put to test in places like a fragrance launch and an anniversary party. Brands recognize the value of having their customers indulge into yet another world.

Chatbots for Messaging

Messaging is a global trend that’s taking the world by a literal connectivity storm, with every app and every company reverting to messaging for things from customer service to every day interaction. Taking it to a new level is the introduction of chatbots, an alternative artificial intelligence put to use by having a conversation with someone, thinking its a person, who can often self learn several responses. The goal is to have them improve businesses and customer service, already working in some sectors. And the reason it works is because people are no longer tolerant to get on the phone for customer service, when social media or texting is so easily at their disposal