Not another marketing trends report: I accidentally wrote this
You are about to read the future of marketing and its past. Why? To be the best.
To begin, I want to come clean and say, “I don’t like trend reports.” In recent years, reports have gotten more visual and less insightful. How many TikTok videos can you include in a report? Agencies: You can never have too much.
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The obvious
CGI turns real: Brands are low on budgets and lacking creative storyboarding with CGI. They are leaving this trend in 2024 and moving forward with real-life giant product activations that generate the same excitement as CGI content once did.
Gen Alpha: Brands inviting Gen-Z influencers & users to interact with Gen Alpha on Roblox, Youtube kids and Fortnite.
AI Personalisation: While personalisation has always been a key part of marketing, the trend version includes AI. It’s more of a MarTech trend, not strategy.
Brands and Marketers using Journey AI and Coveo to increase their conversion rates and sales.
Escapism: Nostalgia, Impulse/Stress-relieve buying, Travel and doomscrolling.
86% of people think distractions can be a healthy way to cope with the stress of everyday life + 82% of people say that sometimes looking forward to an experience is more enjoyable than the experience itself.
Employee-Generated Content: Is this a trend? You decide. The bar for EGC increases every single year. In 2024, These brands leveled up the bar for everyone in marketing:
IP collaborations: Not only we are getting regular brand collaborations with IP of Big Studios and other brands. Brands are also turning their main products/brand characters into valuable IP.
Nike x Lego, two brand coming together to share their IPs and build off third-party intellectual properties.
Ralph Lauren increasing their focus on Polar Bear collection.
Chaos Packaging: The trend of giving product more character through design, not function.
More Bias, Less Facts: If TikTok gets banned and Meta’s community notes don’t perform well. This trend is unlikely to stop.
The alternatives to TikTok, apart from Meta are more closed and focused on individualised interests of audiences. Even substack is getting more personalised with replacement of Explore feed with interest-based categories. (I hate this update)
The decline of Mainstream media and culture.
1. Experience > Story: Video Editing, Art Direction & Event design
Crafting a new story and getting people to like it is harder than ever. What brands are able to change is the experience: discovery, engagement and purchase.
Netflix has been the best at building customer engagement through event marketing and brand activations. No matter what the product is. They always prioritise customer experience.
Brands, Events and Non-profits like RSPB, Marc Jacobs, Late Checkout, US Open had some of the best video editing to make their content standout. The video watching experience matters the most in 2025. For saturated niches like Fashion and Food, video editing is the biggest differential point.
You also have movies, videos and ad campaigns like Taylor Swif from A$AP Rocky, Chanel Ad by Martin Scorsese, Challengers and the list goes on.
To build customer engagement and grow purchases, brands that weren’t leaning into different style of art directions are now leaning into them. Most brands are leaning into film aesthetics and internet core.
Storytelling is always at centre of everything but you can’t meddle with people’s version of your brand story. You can add new elements and change the experience. These two tactics are the key to growing and keeping your brand in a good shape.
2. IRL vs Online: The difference isn’t that big
Every report related to Gen-Z has a similar statistic like this Spotify report: While young people live their lives online, concerts and IRL events are essential. 74% of Gen Zs have attended a concert/live music show in the last year.
We get way too hopeful after reading this type of statistic. One shouldn’t forget the other conversations we are having around Gen-Z and Millennials.
IRL is a luxury in this environment. Most Gen-Zs are only looking to spend on IRL for online credit. To get attention, dates and boost their online persona.
Consumers aren’t alone. Most Out of Home marketing campaigns are now optimised for social media success. Social + OOH is the strategy.
As I shared in the Gen-Z marketing report, some of the brands have responsibility to fix this IRL vs Online equation. But majority of the brands and small businesses only need to remember that IRL Events & needs some or many elements of online world.
3. AI slop vs AI Gold
While there are many creators and content aggregators using AI to create useless and revenue-focused content. There are creators like Vir Saini, Me, Art, Teezy The Turtle and many others that are using Generative AI to create better content.
Some are using AI voiceovers to make their content and insights more visible and heard by millions through better narration. Others are using AI to generate images and creative work that inspires everyone and brings new ideas to life.
One of the best creative AI examples from 2024 was Erykah Badu’s Oscars look inspired by AI artwork from PARALLEL. We are likely to see more of this good work in 2025.
4. A big year for changes in terms of product positioning
This trend is based on Spirit and Delta airlines changing their product positioning, promoting existing/upgraded features as middle class-luxury offerings. Delta providing YouTube premium meanwhile Spirit showing off their new yet mini-upgrades in new ad campaign.
More brands that struggle with sales will seek to change their product position to either middle class-luxury or engage in dupe culture, positioning their product as loud and clear alternatives to trending products.
The impact of TikTok Shops and Temu on struggling retail and CPG brands will be huge. Though I don’t believe customers would notice or call out certain brands for creating dupes.
More product and marketing teams will also work on having a better understanding of their market/product position.
5. Influencer vs Customer Trips
Refy’s customer trip has caused everyone to rethink sponsored trips. I recall that
was the first person to callout this trend. Now, everyone on IG is saying influencer trips are out, customer trips are in.In fitness, You can replace customer trips with fitness & running clubs that include only customers and regular people. Example: Bandit Running & Shake Shack x Cooldown running.
In my opinion, Influencer and Customer Trips have very different goals. You take influencers on trips to generate content and exposure. Meanwhile Customer trips are for engagement and brand loyalty.
If you are forcing or making content out of your customer trips. The reality is you have nitpicked a specific segment of your customer base to do exactly what you were doing with Influencers. Get content out of the deed of taking them on trip.
'Love Is Blind' cast are employees, labor board says.
Your customers are also employees if you are using them as content. The conversation around this trend hasn’t gone that deep yet. But my message is don’t apply rules of an influencer trip to a customer trip.
Instead of exposing them on camera with a new reel everyday. I would recommend brands to use PR to get the word out about their sponsored trips.
6. Curation & Taste are the elements every brand needs.
I simply don’t understand why brands engage in comments, acting like they relate to every mainstream or niched artist. But fail to highlight their taste in content and brand messaging.
Your Instagram stories are to show off a good selection of music, art and support creators with taste. What surprised me recently was Instagram’s creators page collaborating with NOLITA DIRTBAG. It showed they have better taste than most brands that never get past certain artistic and meme guidelines.
Showcasing good taste is the biggest flex on social media. On top of that, curating taste is +10,000 aura. What do I mean by that?
Partner with curators like Hidden NY.
Use niched music, give up trending audios.
Use text in broadcasts and communities to communicate your taste.
Maybe start a content series like Adam Mosseri to highlight creators you like.
Revisiting my wrong and too early predictions from 2024
The Death of Brand-driven purchase decisions
My first prediction for 2024 was that brand and product isn't enough to make people buy. Because the no. of touchpoint needed to make people buy the product or trust the brand have been increasing every year.
While brand as a form of identity will never die. In 2024, people definitely made more purchases based on content, not the brand.
As an example, you have Rhode. Their influencer PR packaging content made people buy pretty heavily. Many of those who ordered were also disappointed as their products arrived in a different packaging. They were disappointed because they made the purchase using content, not brand.
Transformation of Reaction Creators
My third prediction turned out to be wrong. A potential decline of reactionary creators and their transformation into creators like Kai Cenat. Kendrick-Drake Beef, Jubilee's debate videos during US Election and Katt Williams interview, etc. The business of reactionary creators grew pretty fast in 2024. Plus, some of the creators never transformed into original creators. They are still talking about Drake and Kendrick or random topics that contribute nothing to culture. Only drama!
More Cartoons than Influencer-Brand Products
2024 was hard for Influencer-led brands: Prime from KSI and Logan Paul suffered, Matilda Djerf's brand cancelled and MKBHD's brand getting huge backlash, etc. Meanwhile brands that did collaborations with everyone's favourite cartoon got people excited.
Nike x Power Puff Girls, Barbour x Shaun the sheep, Kidsuper's SpongeBob references and Olipop & Barbie. I personally don't consider this 2025 trends prediction. IP is the new currency in media and marketing business. But people are already getting tired of IP collabs because some of them are too lazy.
Reposting Culture on TikTok births Open-Messaging
I am wrong again. Repost feature from TikTok was meant to be growth driver for DMs usage by teens and users. But that never happened.
While TikTok's algorithm is really good at keeping people hooked. They still need to build the network/messaging part of their platform for long-term success.
On IG, users share more content with each other in DMs, compared to Link or Story Sharing. Because TikTok Reposts in 2023 had comments/ text option. My assumption was this Quote Retweet-like structure will help them increase messaging between friends. They removed comments part of repost and not much is changed in terms of DMs usage on TT.
The Internet Aesthetics will die for Cafes & Restaurants
This prediction is wrong because third spaces earned a new role in marketing. Restaurants and Cafes are now being used for their offline aesthetics and brands are giving them a new internet aesthetic and value.
Blank Street x Sabrina Carpenter, Ritz Carlton x Late Checkout, Shake Shack's running collabs and more.
Everyone knows the typical side of Third spaces x Brand collaboration, it's capitalising on lack of connection and irl network in our lives.
Brands will use Classic Movies and New 2024 Releases with a focus on movies that represent your brand while building Gen-Z's Cinematic Experience. Well, brands used Wicked movie. Not the niched releases. And no one cared about cinematic experience.
The other half of this Trends report will come out next week on Tuesday with a potential discussion on where TikTok stands globally and in the USA.
