What’s hot and new in ’22 – trends and events in MD this year 

You can’t buy a hotdog these days without it being linked to sustainability. Well, in IKEA, anyway. Just about every industry is studying how to incorporate this consumer must-have into production-values, products, and packaging. The throw-away culture is dead.

One of sustainability’s siblings-in-arms is digital, and its use is expanding exponentially. With ads in apps, the influence of social media and email marketing, as well as featuring on store fronts, store insides, and in-office information and images, unless you’re paddling across the Atlantic in a canoe (smartphone in waterproof pouch, natch), it’s everywhere you look. The cut to wastepaper alone is phenomenal. These two movers and shakers are fast becoming indispensable in design, marketing and client services, and this is impacting the job market in so many new ways.

First off, communication that works is digital. With client and business meetings increasingly moving to online, this becomes a digital and sustainable offering that saves in fuel consumption, whilst maintaining important face-to-face contact. Right now, we’re experiencing a huge demand for account managers and directors, and the candidates who are eco and digital aware are offering the proverbial icing on the cake for employers.

Meanwhile, the retail sector, in particular, is nailing its colours to digital opportunities. From AR and VR experiences, and the ever-increasing importance of digital touch points, to the fall in demand for traditional print-graphics, digital is the buzzword. Omnichannel design experience plus cutting-edge tech knowledge is becoming an expected by-line on a candidate’s CV, so if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Feet are back on the high street, and it’s looking different. This, together with the dangling carrot of the much talked about metaverse, promises exciting things for retail, brands and marketing. And it embraces the sustainability goalposts too.

More than ever, innovation in UX is key to finding ingenious new strategies and ideas that tackle the sustainability conundrum. This is key in helping brands to dispense with a lot of their packaging, while maintaining user experience, and creating green physical interaction between people, products and the planet. Linked to this is the explosion in sustainable brands and their marketing. Established and traditional names are also responding to the challenge. The outcome of this story is that there is now a huge demand for strategists and planners within design agencies to deal with this client-led need.

All of this means that at mustard MD our brand clients are looking to create, expand and diversify their in-house creative agencies, and to decrease their reliance on third parties for these services.

Meanwhile, agencies are expanding to be fully integrated, offering a full 360-degree service to their clients.

We are also seeing contractors more keen to offer permanent roles to those who previously freelanced for them, as a result of the new IR35 rules.

This is all incredibly good news for our MD sector. We are evolving with the changes in expectations and client needs, and as a result, our job market is healthier and greener than ever.

Before we sign off, we’d just like to offer you a bit of inspiration via this link to the winners of 2021’s Design Week awards:

https://www.designweek.co.uk/event/awards/

Are you feeling up to the challenge? Then click on these:

https://www.dandad.org/en/d-ad-awards/