For example, Bravo’s popular BravoCon (and the bevy of TV and online coverage) will be canceled in 2024, leaving a deeply engaged, female-skewed audience with a bit of attention to spare this summer, even if momentary. A successful BravoCon advertiser like Allergan (maker of Botox, Juvederm) might use this as an opportunity to further experiment with owned experiential activations with “Bravolebrities” versus a sponsorship. What unique void might you be able to test into this summer?

Amplify the positivity the Games already offer us

The Olympic Games are a perfect foil to the election. While the election purposefully puts us in an anxious headspace, the Olympics purposefully puts us in a motivated and positive headspace. So, rather than provide relief, attach on and provide an extension of the positive conversation, fitted to your brand and your customers’ journeys.

The potential experiments are vast and industry-agnostic, from high-investment athlete sponsorships for sizable consumer brands to weekly motivational quotes in your organic social calendar for the start-up DTC brand. A more explorative test might be with the product-led B2B SaaS brand, for example. In this instance, the Olympic Games can be a signal to test higher-order benefits—the emotional benefits—of your brand, when you’ve historically relied on product benefits.

The cookieless future present

The ubiquity of third-party cookies makes their deprecation a tough transition, where many will be reacting to technology, processes and benchmarks breaking as a means to learn and evolve in a cookieless world. This is anything but strategic.

The starting positions of your competitive set in the race of advertising effectiveness are poised to shift, and the winners will have proactively experimented their way to the front. Consider again a balanced innovation strategy. You might label owned data approaches like consented customer data collection programs, front-of-site optimization and creative zero-party data campaigns as more iterative experiments. Meanwhile, commitments to new technologies and exchanges, from retail media networks to contextual targeting with generative AI, to Google’s own Privacy Sandbox, can act as more exploratory experiments. 

It’s not just the marketing teams—the executors—who need to find solace in a frenzied 2024. Cross-functional teams and senior leaders alike deserve to understand how the marketing practice is rationalizing and seizing opportunities from this unprecedented blend of headwinds. Experiment intentionally to communicate more persuasively: Cogent experimentation brings a high level of strategic reasoning to the marketer’s recommendations and spoken word and a greater level of respect and understanding from colleagues. This year is an opportunity for your marketing program—and an opportunity for you and your role, too.