The National Football League consistently promotes the theme “Football is family.” This has been of significance to my family since the NFL has fulfilled that role for me for 62 years after I joined in 1960.

With me on the field for 31 seasons, my family has watched with great interest my involvement. I’m not convinced too many families had the same interest. However, I have noticed many times that families do attend their home games. Thus, ‘team’ brings us all in the family together.

The NFL officiating family comprises crews whose lives are interwoven both in the season and after. The seven members in each crew know each other’s personal families and develop their own group culture. In each crew is a referee – the crew chief – who sets guidelines for each member of the crew. Each member of the crew has his/her own style but conforms to the standards set by the crew chief.

I would suspect the same method is used by each of the teams. However, as I observe the behavior of some teams, it is apparent that no one is in charge. Is it the head coach’s responsibility to see that proper guidelines are established to expect conformity?  I don’t need to go back to the rogue behavior of Colin Kaepernick to cite this behavior. I know that Kap wanted to make a statement about his beliefs,  but it was done on “company time” and not with the outward approval of management. Good/bad/right or wrong, in all fairness, it did raise interest in his cause with some good to follow.

Having had the privilege of playing, coaching, and officiating in team sports for my entire life, it has always been my belief that team, family, and officiating crew culture must take precedence over personal issues. Does this mean one devalues or foregoes issues of integrity?  Of course not! It does mean that one needs to accept the culture of one’s team or help his/her team change what is necessary for that culture.

It occurs to me that if one is unwilling to adapt to or is unable to accept his/her team’s culture, then separation from that team must happen for the success of both the individual and the team.

Will you accept your team/family’s structure and work successfully within those guidelines?

Marketing is a world that is always evolving, always busy, and constantly filled with Anticipatory opportunities for all those who work in the industry and who leverage marketing for their organizations. 

If you are an executive or working professional in the marketing industry, this is likely music to your ears. Having new opportunities and unique ways to tell the story of an organization, product, or service demonstrates longevity in a career and exciting ways to live out your career passions.

However, if you are a small or large business owner or executive in an industry looking to market a product or service, it likely drives you a bit insane trying to keep track of how to target customers, marketing effectively to them, and convert sales leads. Even the act of hiring an external marketing agency that provides you with the ROI you are looking for can be stressful.

It is time that we bring these two worlds together in a productive way, and the link between the two in today’s world has much to do with transformative digital technology, Hard Trend future certainties around those technologies, and how they can be leveraged in new ways for the purposes of effective marketing.

For Marketers: Technotrends and Exponential Ways to Market a Client’s Business

If we begin with a discussion about where content trends are heading this year and beyond, we have to consider where specific age groups spend most of their passive time.

One Hard Trend future certainty that marketing professionals can bank on is that no matter how old an individual is, they utilize and will continue to utilize digital technology. This includes smartphones, tablets, Kindles, Smart TVs, VR headsets, and even traditional desktop computers and laptops. What an individual does on these devices has a certain amount of variable change around it. For instance, one might assume that elderly individuals spend little to no time on TikTok and younger individuals do not favor internet browsers over phone apps.

But things are changing; technology and its exponential uses are accelerating at a rate never before seen, and because of this, all age groups are taking to software they may have never tried before. You might be surprised to find that many Baby Boomers are enjoying the likes of Snapchat and TikTok, while many younger generations are finding more enjoyment utilizing YouTube to learn new things — a website that debuted when the dominant user base was just born.

Going Opposite With Interactive Content Marketing

So, if users of devices and digital channels are transforming, marketing efforts need to transform with them. Even further, being Anticipatory as a marketing agency or working professional in the industry means looking at those trends and leveraging the currently existing marketing technologies and methodologies to go in the opposite direction with your content and whom it gets targeted toward.

Let’s suppose that a company creates a product geared more toward the Baby Boomer generation. This generation grew up without much of the digital technology available today, so too often, marketing agencies default to thinking that this age group needs simple, specific advertising to keep them interested in a product or service they need.

But among many of the marketing content trends that have started dominating this year, interactive content is extremely engaging with a favorable ROI for a multitude of businesses. The favorability of this is due to the fact that buyers of all ages are becoming more independent, wanting to discover the products and services they purchase. One of the most hands-on generations is the Baby Boomer generation, which means they respond to interactive content just as much as a younger individual who is fluent in video game apps and digital hands-on content.

This is a way that marketing agencies and executives can utilize my Anticipatory principle of going opposite. Say you are strategizing content for a hardware store — a business in an industry that traditionally catered to middle-aged men — some of the content could be a fun survey that engages their own knowledge about tools and being handy, interactive animations, and more.

The point is that content you utilize in a marketing strategy is the Soft Trend — a future possibility that is open to influence. It is not set in stone, and it will always be open to influences as the world changes.

For Businesses: Being Collaborative With Your Marketing

For you as a business owner, mastering the marketing behind your products and services might have been a hat you wore at the very founding of your company. However, over time you likely noticed that because of its dynamic nature, passing that task on to an agency or an internal marketing team is a more cohesive plan.

But that does not mean that business owners, executives, and even middle managers want to be in the dark about the marketing of their products. Collaborating with the marketing professionals you hire or the agency you outsource to is something necessary, but how can this be done effectively and without stepping on anyone’s toes?

As the creator of a product or service, you are always closest to the material, and the goal behind those products or services is always geared at a general demographic that you are familiar with. These two categories are the assets you bring to the marketing equation, but what you can streamline better is facilitating an Anticipatory mindset around the target demographic and the products and services you offer. These are both dynamic and ever-changing, and focusing on the Hard Trend future certainties that impact these changes allows you to be more open-minded about the way they will be marketed, and where.

Knowing Your Customers Through Hard Trends

To return back to the aforementioned example of middle-aged men that purchase products from a hardware store, a Hard Trend future certainty is that as more of them retire, they will have more time to work on house projects or hobbies that require the products sold in a hardware store.

But in turn, they also have more time to discover new products through new marketing channels, and if they are already hands-on individuals, this is where your excitement behind the products and services you offer helps a marketing team determine the type of content to tailor now and in the future.

All told, both the marketing professionals working for a company and the business executives leading that company have integral roles in the success of finding new business every year. Instead of keeping to the status quo, consider going the opposite way in dynamic, never-before-seen ways for your industry, but base it on Anticipatory research that brings you future certainty.

As always, business and marketing decisions based on certainty are far less risky than ones based on the wrongful assumption that things will never change. Embrace the change and anticipate to navigate!