Industry Goals For 2025: Did we mention effectiveness ?

The Drum’s recent Predictions event covered everything from antihyperstimulisation and middlenials to aura beauty and whether AI is democratising data. There were some cautionary tales and worrying stats – but overall the future feels exciting.

After what feels like a few years of iterative predictions, and a tendency to focus on the next shiny thing (AI anyone), it’s great to see some wider marketing issues being debated again (including some True favourites – bring on the Era of effectiveness).

Edelman opened with their annual trends report, inspiring us to consider predictions not in terms of specifics, but by looking at the forces in culture that will drive change and the tipping points that will happen in the next 12 months. Edelman’s tipping point scale looks at how trends and cultural activity move along a scale from nascent, to emerging, to tipping point, to mainstream, to backlash.

Pinterest also presented their Pinterest predicts report which they described as a not-yet-trending report. People go to Pinterest with a purpose, and to look at the future, so the search data and boards being built are an early-indicator of the trends likely to hit that tipping point over this year.  I’d recommend grabbing a cherry martini and having a read.

The long and the short of it

The explosion of media and content formats has reached a tipping point in terms of how individuals negotiate their way through the daily onslaught of potential interactions. Chris McCrudden from Edelman talked about our need not for more or new media, but a more choiceful relationship with the media we consume, and how we connect with it. The first generation who grew up as digital natives are doing exactly that – growing up, and so are becoming more discerning in where they spend their time and how much of it they spend – meet the middlenials.

On the one hand, we have advertisers fighting to gain attention in shorter and shorter time frames before the audience moves on, and digital magazines full of quick-read 5 minute briefings, and 10 point listicles. On the other hand, we have streamers, podcasters and youtubers thriving because audiences are seeking longer form content.

In 2025, instead of trying to get your message across in the shortest amount of time possible, try to be worth spending time with.

The Era of Effectiveness

You may have heard us at True talk about effectiveness before (did we mention we’re the only B2B agency with IPA Effectiveness Accreditation!) and about the importance of seeing marketing as an investment not a cost.

In The Drum’s session on ‘proving marketing is a growth engine’ Dimi Mitev (measurement and effectiveness lead at Google) shared some stats from their upcoming effectiveness equation report revealing significantly more CMOs versus CFOs value marketing as a growth driver. Perhaps that’s not a surprise but I’d love to see us as an industry really address this in 2025.

He also shared that only 40% of businesses have a marketing effectiveness goal. Given the focus on efficiency in so many marketing teams this is again perhaps not a surprise.

In 2025 we’ll continue to work with our clients on considering the business metrics that matter versus the vanity metrics that marketers have often come to rely on – read more at Eff* Up B2B.

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple” - Woody Guthrie.

As each new channel appears so we test and evaluate it, but this can lead to us working in silos. Only when we consider our whole mix, long and short term, multichannel and how they interact can we really see what is working.

This year we’ll get better at simplifying cross channel and media measurement. Developing more sophisticated measurement to make the complex simpler, and ultimately more useful and more usable.

Are we overthinking our audiences – once we were happy with demographics, then we worked in personas, but in a session of lightning predictions it was suggested that the next iteration of that would be the era of the mindset. Less focused on the who, and more on the circumstances around making a decision.

Could this be another area of simplification for 2025?

Brand is the next big thing, again

The lightning predictions session also threw up some interesting points on brand. Brand value studies like BrandZ and Interbrands Best Global Brands started in the early 00’s, and 25 years on it feels like understanding brand value is having a resurgence. As marketing budgets contract, the debate around striking the right balance between long term brand building and short term sales activation is back to the fore, not least in this very funny, but nonetheless informative debate from The Drum’s Worldfest: Brand is more important than demand in B2B.

Heritage brands have their own challenges, responsibilities and opportunities as we heard in a panel featuring Currys, The AA, Liptons and Persil. Dan Rubel from Currys talked about changing their brand and marketing not because ROI or brand metrics were a problem, but because everything they were doing was safe, and safe doesn’t take you anywhere. There was an interesting debate over whether heritage brands have a responsibility to be the ones that innovate, because they are already trusted. And whether if your product and customer experience is good you can be braver with your comms.

Working together to drive change in 2025

This year let’s create work that people want to spend time with, let’s look at how we can measure holistically, let’s set ourselves effectiveness goals (not consolidation or efficiency goals), let’s build great brands. Let’s make space to drive change in our industry to ensure that we continue to delight our audiences, and sell our products. Simple!