Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Now that we're well into 2017, are you checking items off your marketing to-do list? Or, like many of us procrastinators, do you have a to-do list that consists of just one item: "Make 2017 marketing to-do list"?

If the latter is the case, IBM has you covered.

The software company has put together an infographic guide to help marketers prioritize their efforts this year, and it also explains the benefits that each idea can have on your program.

For example, stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts or figures alone, the infographic claims, and it gives tips on how to captivate your audience with better stories this year....

We asked innovators behind some of the companies on this year's Most Innovative Companies in Advertising/Marketing list, representing key constituencies in the ad landscape—creative agencies, brands, marketing technology startups, and media platforms—for five predictions for the next five years.

While some of their answers spoke to now-familiar trends—the continued growth of mobile and its attendant impact on brand messaging, the continued rise of video and virtual reality, the need for brands to work on a timeline that matches culture, not ad campaigns—their predictions touched on a much wider range of topics, from the shrinking of the product development cycle to data and the place of technology in the marketing continuum (and even a prediction that the banner will work!).

That range of topics, in itself, speaks to one, overall, very safe prediction, summed up by Percolate's Noah Brier: "The complexity of modern marketing is only going to keep increasing." See more forecasts below....

Read what top marketing analysts and experts have to say about the future of marketing.

...With attention spans dwindling and Polar Vortex induced cabin fever setting in, we tried to brainstorm a way that we could make use of the projections and thought leadership of pioneers in our field without an encyclopedia full of content.

Hence, the birth of Marketing Mad Libs: Expert Edition, in which we gave some of our favorite analysts, authors, and all-around awesome marketers the task of finishing a sentence with a prediction or insight. (The shorter and pithier, the better.) Take a look....

A central problem for marketers is how to convince consumers of their products’ value. How long will customers listen to all the benefits of starting their day with Cheerios before they dismiss everything as manipulative bunk?

According to the 2 professors, Suzanne Shu of UCLA and Kurt Carlson of Georgetown, the answer is the rule of 3: Making up to 3 claims about a product’s value is effective advertising -- any more than that, and people’s cynical defenses kick in....