Posted by Lori Luechtefeld on December 8th, 2014 at 8:37 am

Change today is exponential. If your brand is thinking in a linear fashion, you’re on a path toward doom. (Just ask Blockbuster, BlackBerry, and Kodak.)

These were the sobering thoughts that host Lori H. Schwartz, managing partner at StoryTech, presented in her opening remarks at the iMedia Agency Summit in Bonita Springs, Florida. She noted that we live in an age of disruption, where brands like Nest, Square, and Pandora aren’t just dominating categories, but redefining them. Marketers, she noted, should be embracing disruption — not running from it.

“There are a lot of exciting and complex challenges in our space,” she said. Just a few elements of the current environment that marketers need to be tracking include:

New trends: Content marketing, native, influencers
New tech: Programmatic
New partnership considerations: Acquire, merge, build, or sell?
New mar-comm planning models: Long and short tail, real-time opportunities

If you’re not on top of trends in the above categories, you need to start paying closer attention — lest you get disrupted yourself.

Published Originally at http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/08/dont-run-from-disruption-leverage-it/