Partner Reflections: New Year, Same Mission
We’re kicking off the new year with a series of posts from Prosek Partners’ senior leadership as they reflect on 2023 and what’s to come in 2024. The series continues with thoughts from Partner Dan Allocca who leads the firm’s digital and integrated marketing practice.
The coming of a new year brings new expectations along with reflections of what could have gone better in the past.
Harnessing these brief and rare moments of introspection to focus on the year ahead can be very powerful for a business – and for marketing and communications teams, too. Sometimes the bias towards “new” and “taking action” aren’t always the best recipe for success.
Yes, it’s a new year and a chance to reset. But don’t abandon what’s working well simply for the potentially false feeling of accomplishment – tempting as it may be.
Building your brand and reputation are long-term plays that take years. So, this means that the chances of the strategy you devised in the past remaining largely relevant now and into the future is quite high. While the year may have changed, this does not necessarily mean the mission has – we must stay focused.
This sense of focus will serve you equally well in all things Digital and Paid – the practice areas for which I am responsible for at Prosek. New tools, new platforms, new ways of doing things – they’re all incredibly exciting and keep me and the team endlessly engaged. But, we must assess all of these advancements through the critical lenses of long term goals and objectives.
Let 2024 be a year where we avoid shiny object chasing in favor of disciplined focus.
To that end, here are three digital topics we’re watching but NOT overreacting to just yet:
Artificial Intelligence (AI): We absolutely see and appreciate the power of AI across our work. And the reality is that AI has been used within and around digital marketing applications for the better part of a decade - in some cases longer. While this topic has recently been extra headline-worthy due to the rise of generative AI, the practical applications in a day-to-day workflow are still being explored – and, in most cases, are nowhere near ready for use in any sustained way.
Don’t mistake this as skepticism. AI will undoubtedly yield productivity boosts, but 2024 isn’t the year for disruptions in this space.
Death of the Cookie: The slow but certain death of the cookie, namely its use in advertising applications, has been long known and publicized – particularly by its greatest builder and beneficiary: Google.
This year, they announced they will begin to implement the stoppage of the cookie, certainly impacting advertisers’ ability to target and prospect for leads. However, other identity solutions are already being devised, and Prosek is monitoring this space closely.
With this development, the need for understanding a client’s industry, business and customer base are crucial for success.
The future of X (AKA Twitter): The digital controversy of 2023 was undoubtedly Twitter. In some cases, substantive changes were made that impacted the usefulness of the tool while in other cases, controversy surrounded the platform that turned away advertising dollars, and lots of them.
But, the closest and most capable attempt to displace X as the news aggregator of choice (the launch of Threads) seems to be failing. Our team continues to analyze this space to advise our clients where, and how, to focus their efforts.
In 2024, I remain focused on pushing our missions forward, just as we were in 2023 and just as we will be years into the future. 