What's the next big deal in consumer brand marketing?

It's not regulatory changes, which will continue to create an abundance of new "consumer products," from electricity to prescription diet pills. It's not interactive TV, which will--yes--change the Internet. It's not targeting models that will make our communications more effective.

It's the fact that despite these changes, the bulls eye won't move a bit.

What matters most in brand marketing always has been, is now and always will be, the relationship between a brand and its consumers. And the key to the brand relationship - as it is in any relationship - is trust.

People want to do business with companies they trust. People buy brands they trust to deliver on what they promise. Line extensions succeed when they come from a brand people trust.
Is trust an old-fashioned concept? Yes. That's the beauty of it. Trust is fundamental. It's the glue of human relationships. And, trust is more important now than ever because everything everywhere is constantly changing and moving faster. People are bombarded with messages and information they don't have time to sort out. They're too busy to take chances with the unproven or the sketchy or skeptical. They want products, brands, stories, businesses and people they can believe in.

The need to build trust stays constant. But the space around the bulls eye changes. Here are 10 things that will happen over the next few years to help us zero in on it:

1. We'll understand what global branding means and how to do it.
The U.S. will catch up with the rest of the world, which already has adopted a global mindset. Marketers will come to understand the difference between global branding-which is the right thing to do-and global marketing, which isn't. The mantra "think global; act local" will be extended to "brand global; market local." Brands should have universal trust, appeal and a single-minded vision, but marketing programs that support them have to respect local culture or they won't get anywhere.

Because public relations can make the global brand message believable, while being easily tailored for local needs, our business will continue to see dramatic growth all around the world.

2. We'll understand, finally, that the customer is in charge.
We say this today, but do we know what it means? Are we ready for a marketplace where the individual consumer is in a position of total power? This sea change is happening, and it should stand every marketing model in the world on its head.

Old marketing habits die hard, but some of them will die in this new age. Others will emerge stronger than ever, particularly those that strengthen the bond between brands and the people who buy and use them.

Marketers and their agencies will need to know not how to reach consumers but what they care about and why, how they think, shop and behave, why what they say often differs from what they do. Today's research methods don't tell us, but tomorrow's will.

3. The media will become more important.
Wait. Isn't the media less important with the Internet and all that comes with it? Today, yes. Tomorrow, we'll see the pendulum swing back, for two reasons: Direct communication will continue to grow in importance, and the media will join right in. Media will be customized and personalized. Order up what you want to know about, and they'll oblige.

But there's another reason the media will become more important. People will get tired of being in total control, which is empowering but confusing and overwhelming at the same time. They'll return to the media (both on line and traditional versions) to help them sort things out.

4. Brand strategy will finally equal corporate strategy; we won't just say it does.
With the customer so firmly in charge of everything from communication to transactions, the boardroom will catch up to the idea that every single thing done or said in a company that markets products is about the brand. Today, brand strategy is something controlled by and cared about by a marketing department. Tomorrow, brand strategy will be what the CEO talks about first. Every CEO of every consumer brand company will respect the emotional and intellectual connection between people and brands.

5. We'll see the re-birth of long-term vision.
Brands are built over time, not overnight. Marketers who have sacrificed brand equity in favour of this quarter's results have paid the price in eroding loyalty, and they're learning their lesson. We'll see much greater attention to true brand building (not promotions dressed up like branding) because it's good business. The quest for real loyalty, not tomorrow's sale, will dominate marketing.

6. Public Relations will be understood as a total brand building discipline.
We'll will do a better job of explaining to our clients and to the world that public relations encompasses everything clients do to build relationships with their publics including, but clearly not limited to, communicating with them through the media. We'll be at least as valuable to the strategic planning process as ad agencies and management consultants, and more integral to the integrity and protection of the brand promise.

The pyramid structure of most public relations agencies will give way to structures that give clients more access to experienced strategists and counselors, which is what they need.

While we get flatter, we'll also get more departmentalized. Specialists in strategic planning, creative, media, writing, and other practices will rise up as they have in advertising agencies.

7. Companies will appoint brand champions.
Marketers will learn how to integrate brand communications themselves instead of asking advertising agencies to do it just because advertising costs more than other disciplines.

This will force all brand counsellors from whatever fields to better understand one another. We'll come to agree that the whole of branding beats the sum of its parts, hands down.

8. Management consultants will continue to make headway onto the brand counselling turf.
We'll embrace this trend.

What management consultants do is process quantitative data, learn from it and make specific recommendations from it. Can we in the public relations business find the way to marry qualitative understanding with quantitative fact? You bet, and we better.

9. Public relations agencies will recognize that our most important contribution to our clients isn't the big idea.
It's insight. Intelligent probing of the brand promise, the targets' wants and needs and the changing environment they live in, all leading to the discovery of something the client hadn't thought of before. After all this, clients will still want the big idea. They should.

10. "Spin" will die.
OK, this may be more of a wish than a prediction. But it can come true. Public relations has never been about "spin." Let's stop talking about it that way.

There will be a myriad of other changes, in addition to these ten. The winners will be those who embrace the new systems, strategies and opportunities without getting caught up in them.

Building a good reputation gets you part of the way there. People admire brands and businesses with good reputations; they believe in and are loyal to brands they trust.

The smartest marketers know that no matter what else changes, that never will.