Talking about trends at the beginning of the year—a little cliche? Probably so, but this year we’re taking a different approach to appeal not only to those of us marketers building strategy, but also to our admired creatives who design the visuals and write the words to help execute that strategy.

This collection of trends includes outside resources so you can garner more information to help you do your job better this year.

In our last blog, we discussed the keys to creating a successful brand activation strategy. With your target audience defined and your goals established, it’s now time to put a cohesive plan into place and start engaging with – and selling to – your customers. 

“It’s September, and we don’t have a style guide for Holiday. We’re making it up as we go.”

“We’re having challenges getting our brand campaign faithfully executed by our internal creative team and agency partners.”

“We need more events, beyond the retail holidays, to get customers excited about coming into our stores.”

“We need more assets so we can allocate more of our print budget to the digital space.”

“We want our marketing team to work further ahead so we can guarantee a 360-degree experience.”

Whoa. That’s a lot of really big challenges. Any of them sound familiar? Most retailers—indeed most marketers—have experienced these issues. And they all share one thing in common: an urgent need to plan ahead.