Red Sky Predictions 2022 Report: Ep. 22 of Red Sky Fuel for Thought Podcast

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

How our 10 Red Sky Predictions are playing out and shaping the 2022 communications and PR landscape, including these trends:

·     “Corporate Purpose or Bust”: the evolution of corporate purpose

·     “Personnel Gets Personal”: changing employee engagement tactics

·     “As Seen on Social Is the New As Seen on TV”: social as the e-commerce tastemaker

Each year, Red Havas publishes an annual “Red Sky Predictions Report” forecasting 10 fundamental trends shaping the integrated communications and PR landscape. We identify these trends by tapping the insights of Redsters from the agency’s 10 markets around the world, coupled with a landscape analysis of media coverage over the past year and proprietary research from Havas’ Prosumer and Meaningful Brands surveys.

In this month’s episode, Red Havas’ Global CEO James Wright is joined by Sportradar’s Andrew Bimson, Equitable’s Kathryn Reichert, and Redster Davitha Tiller to discuss our 2022 predictions, which span the marketplace and the workplace, customer safety and retail experience, the future and the past, the digital and social media space, and healthcare and technology.

First up for discussion was our “Corporate Purpose or Bust” prediction, addressing the recent push toward purpose-driven communication.

“A company’s purpose must be authentic and rooted in its corporate DNA,” says Sportradar COO Andrew Bimson. “In this rush to stand for something, some firms and brands risk putting the purpose story itself ahead of the plan and actions, and employees and others will be quick to call a company out for doing so. Purpose is not exclusively a marketing discipline and should resonate throughout the organization and be the fabric of what that firm stands for.”

Kathryn Reichert, who is Equitable’s director of employee engagement, says, “The power balance between employees and employers has shifted. Employees want to feel that their work matters, and they need visible action from the company they choose to work for that aligns with their personal values.”

Regarding our “Personnel Gets Personal” prediction, which celebrates how amplified employee voices will lead to more transparent employee relations, Kathryn says, “Every person in the world had a unique first-time experience when it came to the pandemic. In the absence of credible information from public health officials and [with an influx of] conflicting information, people turned to the organizations they knew, namely their employers.”

“Employees are being viewed as influencers and brand ambassadors,” says Red Havas’ Davitha Tiller, EVP of social and integration, regarding the social aspect of employee relations. “More and more, we are seeing the value of, and increased engagement from, authentic employee-generated content.”

To close out our discussion, each of our guests weighed in on the role of social media, and TikTok in particular, in influencing consumers and driving sales (see our “As Seen on Social” Is the New “As Seen on TV” prediction).

“What an employer puts on social media influences everything from talent acquisition to how employees connect with the company,” says Kathryn. “The thing that I find so interesting about TikTok is that it reaches people in a younger demographic, enabling brands to get in front of people early while they’re still forming opinions.”

Andrew adds, “I think there’s now a generational impact of people understanding what it means to be on these screens and to be exposed to that type of content. This creates a challenge for marketers to be conscious about a share of mind or a share of screen time when choosing how much to push through those particular channels.”

Finally, Davitha provides insight on the future of social content: “It’s truly the year of the creator. When we look at all our social- and content-related trends in the current report, creators and influencers are the common denominator. As marketers and brands, we need to make sure we’re considering how to work with creators in the most powerful ways.”

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Also mentioned on this episode:

·     Red Sky Predictions 2022 Report

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