Brand marketing predictions for 2023—and how agencies will be impacted

Not only will this broader definition of what a creative looks like enable agencies to service clients more efficiently, it can offer a path for those who have been outside the agency structure to get a foot in the door, bringing new ideas, skills and perspectives. The animating requirement will be the ability to pair big idea thinking with highly specific storytelling know-how across multiple, and often dissimilar, platforms. 

DTC brands demand more sophisticated online sales solutions

Just a few short years ago, eyeglasses, razors and mattresses by mail had traditional consumer brands scrambling. These new, direct-to-consumer players were reinventing retail through a mix of savvy branding, performance advertising and the elimination of legacy channels. 

Yet many of these world-beating DTC brands are struggling, if not out of business. What changed? 

Call it a confluence of events. First, the cheap money these businesses were built upon—as in venture capitalists willing to fund millions (or billions) in losses to gain customers—has gone away as interest rates rise. Second, with changes from Apple, targeting on Facebook is much more difficult than it had been previously, making one of the primary sales-generating channels less effective and more expensive. 

For the brands that remain, driving sales to a single website will no longer be the mission. Instead, navigating a tangled landscape of multiple sales channels will be the name of the game. For agencies, this complexity has an upside, boosting demand for partners who can deliver more sophisticated marketing and e-commerce systems than most brands would be able to manage on their own. 

Gender-neutral marketing gains greater mainstream adoption

Gender has long been one of the primary demographic categories underpinning marketers’ audience segmentation, ad strategies and product development. Women get one message, men get another.Yet as notions around gender become increasingly fluid, particularly among Gen Z, brands are realizing that gender may not be the most reliable construct to build their marketing efforts around. And, in fact, doing so may be limiting their effectiveness and reach at a time when people expect more universal messaging and design.