Here are the top 3 things disruptive marketers should keep the top of mind in 2018 to ascend the corporate ladder, shake things up and drive toward unprecedented success:

1) Move from cause to brand purpose and place it at the heart of business strategy.

CSR and cause marketing drove marketers of the past to think about corporate responsibility and giving back as key marketing activities and acts of corporate citizenship. Today these two ideas have migrated to the notion of brand purpose. This is where an organization identifies an aspirational mission, tied to its day to day offerings. This unifying theme serves to strategic blend business and brand in ways that create experiences centered around, in some way, making tomorrow better than today.

Successful marketers in the year ahead will place brand purpose at the core of business and brand strategy and use it as a lever of growth with internal and external audiences.

2) Drive toward engagement of the heart.

Emotional engagement is the sister to rational engagement. Rational engagement is based on the stimulation of the mind, whereas emotional engagement is based on the stimulation of the heart. In today’s age of brand experience, it seems that emotional engagement is proving to be more and more critical to achieving winning results and effective storytelling and digital marketing are at the heart of this movement.

Today marketers are being tasked with crafting interactions with customers instead of mere transactions. To do this, they must not lead the customer journey with the “sale” but rather the carrot that will drive to it. That carrot must be translated into the ability to transform storytelling into a vital business competency that takes the why and who of the brand and translates them into experiences that create lasting emotional connections. This type of thinking will without question help define distinction and competitive advantage in 2018.

3) Remember that customers today don’t buy into things, they buy into stories brought to life through a strategic mix of creativity + technology.

Stories have become one of the greatest currencies of business. This is because goods and services have become largely commodified by price point and customers are looking for brands they can believe in, be a part of, and make statements through, that echo their personal ethos.

In the year ahead, smart marketers will use a strategic mix of creativity and technology to generate and deliver stories that create lasting connections with customers. This will involve leveraging data-driven insights on both the science AND art side of the marketing function. Using the power of cognitive tech to unearth storylines that convey authentic voice and emotionally engage, as well as personalize and best time interactions, will empower companies to emerge as much as best-in-class content brands, as leaders of their given industries.

Article written by: Billie Howard