Are you ready to thrive in 2014? MEplusYOU predicts 14 digital trends brands should take notice of and how to apply each to your marketing strategies.

1. FOR 2014

2. Youth Re-Movement
What’s Changed?
Members of the youngest generation
haven’t abandoned Facebook yet, but they
are relying more and more on one-on-one
and text-based apps. Maybe it’s the
rebellious nature of youth or maybe it's
something more personal…avoiding social
networks helps avoid embarrassing content
making its way to employers. It also helps
avoid the overwhelming anxiety that comes
with comparing yourself to 1,000 friends at a
time.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
The one-on-one nature of mobile means you
must be invited in, thus posing a challenge
for marketers who aren’t immediately
welcomed. No. 1 on your priority list should
be to understand what about your brand
helps empower and create experiences that
enable the youth.
2

3. The Sharing Economy
Continues to Thrive
What’s Changed?
We are no longer in a consumption mindset.
The economy has taught us to be smarter
about what we buy. As the economy turns
around, the need to share our purchases
may dwindle. But we have now learned that
not everyone in our neighborhood needs to
own a chain saw.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
How has the sharing economy affected your
business, and what would happen if more
people adopted this mindset? Could you
take credit for facilitating the sharing? Does
a brand like Home Depot build trust by being
the resource that connects the neighbors
who may need to share tools? Will the
traditional rental car companies change
their models to compete with Lyft and Zipcar
(like Avis is trying to do)? Will your local
restaurant facilitate the process of sharing
leftovers with those in need? Even when
consumers are not consuming, they are
watching and engaging in other ways.
3

4. Organic Search Data
Is MIA
What’s Changed?
Google recently announced that it will stop
publishing which search keywords are driving
traffic to your website, but will make the
information available to Google Search
advertisers. Yahoo! and Bing will likely follow
suit.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
This will have a huge impact on online
publishing, media and certain blogger sites
because it limits the ability to optimize their
content for relevant keywords. Marketers
should revisit their paid media activities with
such networks. Marketers and agencies
need to double down on their natural search
efforts during this
transition period.
4

5. (RE)Commerce
What’s Changed?
US and European retail shoppers will see a
variety of experiments with digital/mobile
checkout, thus providing marketers a huge
opportunity to provide contextual and
engaging marketing communication.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
From a marketer’s viewpoint, one of the
critical differentiators between eCommerce
and a traditional brick & mortar shopping
experience is the ability to effectively up/cross-sell at or before the purchase decision
point. As retailers experiment with making
the checkout process run parallel to the
shopping experience, they are creating a
persistent digital link to the on-premise
consumer. The ability to make product
suggestions based on purchase intent, prior
purchases and even physical location within
a store suddenly becomes a reality at any
brick & mortar retail location utilizing a
digital/mobile checkout.
5

6. Internet of Things
What’s Changed?
There will be 15 billion devices (“things”)
connected to the Internet by 2015. Nothing
can offer more personal communication
and precise targeting than individual
specialized devices that comprise the
“Internet of things”, such as
watches, TVs, refrigerators, thermostats and
more.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
There are still many unanswered questions
around what marketing in this new channel is
going to look like. Expect health and
fitness, home and services businesses to lead
the way in providing added value via these
devices. Start with shared values and
provide real worth to consumers, and you
just may find your brand being invited into
one of the closest relationships you’ve ever
experienced for a brand.
6

7. Shopping Is
Finally Social
What’s Changed?
In recent years, many brands have dabbled
with the integration of social and
eCommerce, however, it has never been as
easy as it is today. Brands like Starbucks and
Amazon have discovered ways to make the
shopping and gifting experience a social
experience as well.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
The lines between social and commerce
have never been more blurred. Social
shopping isn’t just selling via social media.
It’s crowdsourcing ideas and feedback. It’s
finding the perfect outfit by seeing what is
most pinned. So, marketers must ask
themselves: What have we learned in social
through trending topics and re-pins to help
make the shopping experience more robust
for our retail shoppers? Are there any up and
coming fashion bloggers who we should
solicit to be guest merchandisers on our site?
7

8. Mobile Native
This needs to be of a mobile
device
What’s Changed?
Nielsen reports that smartphones now
comprise two-thirds of all phones in the US.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
A new set of service-based apps—like Uber
and Vine—are showing us that the mobile
experience might be the only one that
really matters. In some cases, such as
Vine, it is almost impossible to fully interact
with others except via the mobile app. As
this trend grows, we may see a time when
a future generation doesn’t know what
http:// or www. means. Who needs that
when everything someone needs is
available via an app?
8

9. Home Automation
What’s Changed?
DIYers are becoming more accepting of,
and honestly, less creeped out by,
self-learning gadgets that adjust to their
habits, help them save money, and do the
heavy lifting at home.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
The demand for a seamless, end‐to‐end
experience across services in the “smart
home” has arrived. Everything is an
interface now. Nest expanded from a
learning thermostat to a smoke and carbon
dioxide detector providing you information
whenever you want it. What could a major
player like Kraft do if it partnered with a
Samsung refrigerator to tell you exactly
what is in your fridge at any given time?
9

10. Gesture-based
Interfaces
What’s Changed?
Not just limited to the Wii anymore, this
technology lets consumers control
computers using hand gestures with the
ability to detect individual finger movements.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
Marketers can further engage consumers by
having them physically interact with
products and services anytime and
anywhere. Let the consumer explore your
latest car using a 3‐D model so specific that
they can look at the radio and take apart
the engine. Wonder how a certain drug
works? Take a deep‐dive into a 3‐D version
of the molecule. Want to demonstrate
Louisville Slugger’s latest bat technology?
Allow the consumer to manipulate the bat
and look at its insides. All this using finger and
hand motions with precision that could never
be matched with mouse movements.
10

11. Email Is Not Dead,
Just Repurposed
What’s Changed?
Nothing really. A while back, email was
supposedly dead, but it’s more prominent
and more useful than ever.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
While email hasn’t changed, its role has
changed substantially, and it is often being
successfully used as a way to curate or
surface a brand’s social channels or other
shareable content. For example, Brand
Central has a daily email with top
articles, then a weekly wrap-up of the ones
that were most viewed. Too many brands
and agencies ignore the power of email and
the role it can and should play in a bigger
social and digital ecosystem.
11

12. Content Curation
& Aggregation
What’s Changed?
Information overload. Too much content
available online has made curation more
valuable than ever.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
Users know they don’t have time to access
the entire infinite Internet in search of what’s
valuable to them. Services like
Pinterest, Pulse.me and Flipboard have
become useful tools to enable users to
create their own experiences where content
they see as valuable comes to them.
Marketers can not only be content
generators, but can also serve as
experts, filterers and those who pass on
valuable information worth reading—even if
it’s not theirs.
12

13. The Digital Wallet
What’s Changed?
The continued proliferation of smartphone
usage combined with technological
advancements within the commerce
space create a unique opportunity for
consumers to pay for goods in an
easier, more convenient way. Now with the
hype around technologies like Coin
card, this could be the year it really takes
off.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
As the mobile payment story continues to
evolve, it could easily alter the way people
do business. With Starbucks’ recent foray
into Passbook as a way for consumers to
pay via their digital wallet, brands that
make purchasing easy (and potentially
even more rewarding) will present
themselves as innovative and unique, and
can add even more value
(rewards/benefits) to the standard
purchase versus traditional brick & mortar
retailers.
13

14. Lifelogging
What’s Changed?
More passive technologies and rapid
adoption mean people will chronicle their
lives constantly.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
Posts, tweets, grams, and pins only capture
snapshots of our lives. But more apps, like Day
One and Chronos, and hardware, such as
Glass and Narrative, are coming online that
make chronicling every moment and activity
completely passive. For marketers, this could
be a blessing and a curse. It means every
interaction with your brand is more likely to be
captured and possibly shared, for better or
worse. (Holy crap! I eat Taco Bell that often?)
For example, marketing applications for Glass
are purposefully limited, but the app Glashion
allows users to snap photos of clothes and
accessories of passersby and comparison
shops on the fly. The impact on search is still
to be determined.
14

15. The Digital Butler
What’s Changed?
While helpful, our phones and utilities do not
share information with one another—at least
for now.
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
The iPhone was presented in 2007 (yes, only
seven years ago) and introduced us to the
world of apps. Smart marketers created
apps that helped their customers find
stores, order a pizza, or simply purchase a
book from anywhere. All apps generally
served a single function, and we moved in
and out of apps as we performed tasks. Book
a flight, schedule a meeting on your
calendar, and check the weather before
your trip. You jumped in and out of each
app, but what if each of these could “talk”?
What if your phone knew that you just
booked a flight, so it blocked your calendar
and told you to pack a sweater? Welcome
to the world of The Digital Butler. Think of all
the possibilities for your brand.
15

16. Our Authors
Rahul Purini
Robert Cevallos
Renee McKeon
Matt Smith
Matt Whitaker
Sarah Torrence
Shawn Staley
Megan Lee
Mary Ridgway
Jason Booker
Leslie Davis
Vadim Dolt
Sarah Marshall
Jason Shipp
Kristi Maynor
16

17. meplusyou.com
marketing@meplusyou.com
214.224.1000