What Marketers Must Learn From the 2010s

The year 2020 has a momentous ring to it. It feels like the future has arrived. It has long been one of those milestone dates that galvanized the imaginations of futurists and armchair Nostradamuses, often in ridiculous ways (“We’ll eat candy made of underwear!” or “Our feet will become just one big toe!”). But it was Mark Twain who astutely observed that “Prediction is difficult—particularly when it involves the future.”

So before we go predicting, pontificating, and prognosticating about what all those drones and robots and VR headsets are going to do for us next, it seems appropriate to look back at the decade gone by and what marketers can learn from it.

Let’s return to the world of ten years ago, at the tail end of the aughts. President Obama has recently moved into his new house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Oprah is ending her talk show, the King of Pop is found dead in his bed, and the movie “Avatar” has pulverized every box office record between here and a fictional moon called Pandora. Our own planet is still embroiled in a worldwide financial crisis, not to mention a nasty swine flu epidemic and the warmest decade in history (now surpassed only by this decade).

And the marketers a decade ago? Well, they’re still in charge. But not for long.

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