This article originally appeared in Forbes on Jan. 2, 2025
Marketers eye 2025 with a mixture of optimism and fear. The economy seems resilient and new technologies like AI excite. Yet budgets are still under pressure and competition feels more intense, according to the latest CMO Survey from Duke and the AMA.
Forewarned is forearmed—and so, based on conversations with marketers and our own internal survey data, I propose eight trends to ponder going into the new year.
1. Content Gets More Average
Call it the pandemic esthetic: We favor the amateur style. It’s everywhere. Recent campaigns from AirBnB, Warby Parker, United Airlines and Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” celebrate the user-generated look. Glossy production values are starting to seem very 2019.
But the trend goes deeper. Search engines and prediction algorithms tend to move us in the same direction, removing quirks and outliers. For example, there’s evidence that academic papers are using similar words and pop songs are getting more alike.
And celebrities? They’ve gone from being glamorous aliens to less well-dressed versions of ourselves.
2. Consumers Are More Narcissistic
Yes, we are. I’m not talking about pathological narcissism, which affects fewer than 1%. Just ordinary self-centeredness, which some studies show is on a long-term upward ride.
Marketers should see this as an opportunity. After all, marketing itself is somewhat narcissistic, with its continual cries for attention and thinly veiled braggadocio. Embrace it; it’s the way of the world. It’s what brought Old Spice’s “Swagger” back, after all.
3. Your Best Customers Get Even Better
The rich are getting richer, and internal studies I’ve seen show that retailers are getting more and more value from fewer and fewer customers. Your best customers are more important than ever.
Thus the continual rollout of “VIP Experiences,” special treatment for the 1%. These super-loyalty programs are not only for hotels and airlines—they’re encouraging high rollers to roll, sharp dressers to dress sharper and even over-scheduled Disney families to ride with a guide.
4. RIP To The Browser Cookie
It’s the longest death scene in history: the demise of the third-party browser cookie. 2024 was supposed to be its final moment on Google’s market-leading Chrome browser, which has more than 65% of global traffic. I even wrote an obituary. Then Google famously changed its mind.
Advertisers have already moved on. The vast majority of digital ad spend is now on channels like mobile apps and streaming TV, which don’t use cookies. Google’s proposed requirement to have people “opt-in” to web tracking could bring the percentage of cookie-driven ads on the web below 10%. It’s baked.
5. The Marketing Funnel (Finally) Disappears
Big brands are still important, but an alarming number are losing steam. One reason? The path to purchase is collapsing. Scrolling Facebook, I can see an ad for a custom-tailored suit from a brand I’ve never heard of and in a few taps I’ve configured my model; a few more, it’s mine. I’ve gone from awareness to checkout in 90 seconds.
Shoppable ads are a funnel in miniature, and they’re getting more attention. And brands like Geico collapse awareness and conversion, connecting TV ads directly to quotes via on-screen QR codes and Amazon data.
6. Data Is The New Creative Bottleneck
Ask any agency AE old enough to know and they’ll tell you that creative was always the cap. Copywriters and artists could not produce as many versions of anything as the client could use. Campaigns were defined by creative person-power.
Not anymore. Generative AI promises to make creative versioning trivial and cheap, giving brands as much text and imagery as they want—and more. So what’s the problem now? In a word: data. Targeting and personalization require information, so campaigns will increasingly be defined by how much you know, not how much you do.
7. AI Threatens Introverts
I spent my younger years reading and writing and later got interested in computer programming, even as my fellow introvert friends took to art and math. Now what are large language models like OpenAI’s GPT good at? Exactly the same things.
It turns out that Claude and Gemini are introverts. LLMs and GenAI—so far, at least—aren’t good at classically extroverted activities like inspiring people, playing team sports and closing big deals.
What does this have to do with marketing? Well, I’d guess at least half of your team is in this threatened category. Be empathetic. Maybe suggest that they take, dare I say it, an acting class.
8. Every Business Is Now In Show Business
Picture this: 45,000 people from 140 countries, hanging out in downtown San Francisco with Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson and Pink, who is literally swinging like an acrobat across the crowd. Three days of some 1,500 “shows” seen by hundreds of thousands of people around the world via a Hulu-like subscription streaming app.
If this screams “CRM conference” to you, then you’re right. (It was Salesforce’s Dreamforce event, held last September.) If not, you don’t know the new rules of marketing. Even business-to-business software companies need to compete for fragments of prospects’ attention with gaming apps and TikTok dance-offs now.
What To Do For 2025
Earlier this year, I proposed some mega-trends for 2024. My conclusion: Marketers will need more first-party data, gathered with consent, to win. This is still true.
What’s changed? Consumers. Like cats, they are notoriously difficult to herd. In order to reach us, marketers have got to include themselves in the flow of our splintered lives on our own terms. This means weaving themselves into our social and streaming feeds via influencers and data-driven ad targeting.
This means removing friction everywhere we can, through shoppable ads, QR codes on TV screens or simply one-tap checkout or a more thumb-friendly app.
Above all, it means providing content that attracts us as much as user-generated, slyly self-important, joyful seven-second memes.