Lannie Byrd is the Chief Operating Officer of mhp.si and has over 30 years of media and marketing experience. Lannie serves on the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Southern Regional Board and is a member of the 4As Emerald Forum.
Change and disruption – that’s going to be the theme for marketers AGAIN in 2025. Honestly, that isn’t anything new to marketers who’ve survived the past five years of constant change.
This year, we’ll see the vast majority of change around the adoption of generative AI. But an overlapping priority will be a focus on prioritizing the consumer; looking at their needs, desires and consumption patterns.
Putting Generative AI into Action
In 2025, marketers will be challenged to show how they can put generative AI in place and make it useful in the world all around us.
Leaning into the consumer focus, the first benefit of AI will be extreme personalization. You’re already behind if you don’t have a CRM full of first-party data about your customers and potential customers. But with generative AI, we will see emails, websites, apps, chatbots and phone systems that know who customers are, how much they spend, their favorite sports team and color and all of that reflected in their interactions with a brand. Think Spotify DJ or Duolingo’s bird for your brand.
Another benefit of all of this AI personalization is generative AI creative production. By the end of 2025. I expect generative AI to legitimately be able to spell words in images correctly and handle iterative automated merging and sizing. This will allow gen AI to do even more to fulfill that extreme personalization focus.
With AI creative coming to the forefront in 2025, I think we’ll also see a consumer backlash against the use of AI and a need for transparency in the use of AI. By the end of 2025, I also think we’ll see a surge of interest in achieving the authentic, emotive creative that gen AI has the potential to do, but still hasn’t shown it can produce.
In regards to AI I always have to remind our team that gen AI still requires human guidance. Human Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence is greater than Artificial Intelligence alone (HI + AI > AI). But by utilizing the best and most creative abilities of both, marketers can do more for clients.
Consumer focus
The other continuing shift we’ll find in 2025 marketing is the greater focus on the consumer in several ways.
In 2025, marketers must acknowledge that consumers are in control – more than just through their purchases, but also through their media choices, their reviews and the attention they give creators and influencers. The consumer rules the marketing world.
Marketers will be more direct in their approach to consumers, with more advertising shifting to performance-based advertising that’s conscious of the sales funnel and measuring ROI. Attribution will continue to evolve, examining all the advertising touchpoints along the consumer journey, and some marketers will continue breaking out new versions of MMM (marketing mix model). Google is already getting into MMM with their Meridian open source model, which utilizes both Google and YouTube data sets, to be released in early 2025.
We should also pay close attention to where the consumer is turning for entertainment and news. Streaming media will continue to expand, with growth in connected TV (CTV). Vertical video will grow, as it is even invading social media channels like LinkedIn. Even if TikTok disappears for U.S. users, we’ll see vertical video growth on YouTube shorts, Instagram and possibly even a play on X (formerly Twitter).
Finally, marketers will see shifts in where consumers turn to answers in 2025. Google’s domination will be shaken as they lose market share to social media and AI. Plus, depending on the outcome of the federal anti-trust case, we could have a new Apple search engine, a new default web browser and a split between Google search and the rest of their marketing tools. For marketers, this means changes from SEO strategies to content strategies, and more search ads merging into Google’s Performance Max and Demand Gen black boxes.
Remember: Change is Fun
With all this change and disruption, how are marketers to survive in 2025? Let’s remember: change is fun!
You didn’t get into marketing to come to the office and do the same things the same way everyday.
Anyone in marketing today entered it with eyes wide open. Since the introduction of websites we’ve had waves of change, with social media, high speed internet, mobile devices, streaming media and now artificial intelligence.
We’ve all learned new skills along the way and half the marketing jobs that exist today were unheard of 30 years ago. Start another round! Go ahead and learn how to write prompts and integrate AI with the API from your favorite marketing tools. You’ve made it this far. You can handle 2025!
