NEW YORK: Brand owners like Estée Lauder, Nissan and the Campbell Soup Company expect strategies in areas such as social media and mobile to develop in 2013, while still falling short of true maturation.

DigiDay, the trade title, asked leading executives to make predictions for next year. Russell Moorheard, vice president, digital operations and strategy at Estée Lauder, the cosmetics specialist, stated that mobile has not become a mainstream priority.

"However, I am convinced that those companies that have made an early investment in mobile built a strong foundation and truly focus on delivering something unique will only move that much further ahead," he added.

Joe Barbagallo, manager of social media at Volvo Cars North America, also expressed reservations about QR codes, which consumers can scan with mobile phones to access information online.

"There are too many variables when using QR codes ... that make it extra work for the consumer to drive mass adoption," he said. "Something similar, such as augmented reality, is something to look out for, but not until the reader functionality is built into the native camera app in your iPhone."

Adam Kmiec, director of global digital marketing and social media at the Campbell Soup Company, the food group, also suggested mcommerce "won't see the acceleration" often predicted, as wireless payment technologies are insufficiently common.

While mobile has "arrived", he added, mcommerce "won't see the acceleration ... many marketers hoped for" as most telecoms companies and retailers are not adopting near field communications tools for completing wireless transactions.

He added that social media will move beyond its "explosion of growth", because "so much of digital and marketing in general, will be social in nature, it will be nearly impossible to separate the social part from the non-social part."

On its part, H&R Block, the tax services group, is active on both Facebook and Twitter, but is yet to witness pioneering examples of companies using them for customer relationship management (CRM).

"One thing I think is important for social marketing and social business is the integration with CRM, and I don't think social CRM will make a ton of progress in 2013," said Scott Gulbransen, its director, social business strategy. "I don't see anyone doing a great job at it yet."

Elsewhere, Chad Jacoby, senior manager of social media marketing at Nissan, argued the rise of content marketing, where brands produce video and similar material, is unlikely to undermine television.

He said: "TV will not be unseated nor toppled from its dominant position in the marketing mix despite a lot of pundits saying yet again that this will be the year that digital video will explode. The reason is that the networks and cable companies still produce the best content."

Data sourced from DigiDay; additional content by Warc staff