What Will Marketing Look Like in 2025? ‘It’s Going to Get Weird.’

Retail executives and branding experts predict how  companies will–and won’t–be reaching consumers this year. Article originally posted on INC. 

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If 2024 felt like the year of weird for consumer brands, which  produced such products as beer-infused ice cream, pretzel perfume, and hot fudge sundae-flavored sparkling water, get ready. Marketing campaigns will likely only get weirder this year. 

That’s the prediction from serial entrepreneur and branding  consultant Tom Rinks. The co-founder of sunscreen brand Sun Bum and the brain behind Taco Bell’s famous chihuahua says the  fundamental goal of branding will always be manufacturing an  aspirational image for companies and products, but what qualifies as  aspirational can evolve over time. Right now, Rinks says, the cool  factor has a funkier flavor best epitomized by the canned water  company Liquid Death, which has catapulted into a $1.4 billion juggernaut. 

“It is going to kind of be a little bit more of a wild west next year,” says  Rinks. “Could be less politically correct than we’ve ever been.” As founders strap in for the ride, here are the marketing trends that he and other retail executives will be watching. 

Post-omnichannel play 

If the retail industry in 2024 could be summed up in one word, it  arguably would be “omnichannel.” Consumer brands embraced a  strategy of everywhere all at once. Everyone from one-time direct-to consumer darlings like Allbirds and corporate giants like Nike embraced wholesale. Founders even started selling their blouses and leather totes on UberEats. But this year, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein sees that approach changing. Instead of selling in multiple channels, he says, brands will focus on fewer, more strategic channels in an interconnected way. 

“When I look at the most important brands and entrepreneurs on the planet and how they’re finding success, they’re not selling everywhere.  They’re selling in the right locations for the particular demographic,”  Finkelstein said last week at the National Retail Federation’s annual  convention in New York. “This is almost post-omnichannel.” 

Also speaking at NRF, New Balance president and CEO Joe Preston dubbed the approach selective distribution. “We’re not everywhere,”  said Preston. “We do business with retailers that we believe are going  to want to position the brand premium and are not just fitted to try  to discount.” 

Increased personalization 

Marketing executives are also betting on providing increasing  personalization for customers. Max Magni, the chief customer and digital officer at Macy’s, says that is a core strategy for the department store chain, which also owns Bloomingdale’s and the beauty retailer  Bluemercury. “It’s not about just personalizing the offer and giving you a different discount,” said Magni at NRF. Instead, the retailer is  prioritizing personalization in its customer service and call centers. 

Still, personalization can be a slippery slope. Emily Silver, the chief  marketing and athlete experience officer at Dick’s Sporting Goods,  warned about the potential downsides when brands take the personal touch too far and leave consumers feeling data-mined and exposed. 

“Personalization is exciting, but to me, it’s also quite scary,” said Silver. “Because personalization is really good when it goes well, and it’s  really bad when you do it badly.” She adds, “There are privacy issues.

We’re all trying to go for the same access to that data, and that, to me, is the tipping point that we’re all trying to figure out.” 

Authenticity versus AI 

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly advanced and more widely used in advertising, Tom Rinks says maintaining a semblance of trust and a human touch will be even more important for brands. 

“It’s just so saturated now,” Rinks says of consumers’ social media feeds. “It used to be, ‘I don’t believe it unless I see it.’ You can’t believe  anything you hear. Now, it’s, ‘You can’t believe anything that you see anymore.’” He adds, “All of these bad, fake generated things are going  to get more and more suspect.” 

The best way to cut through that AI noise? Authenticity, he says. “In  the future, that’s going to be even more and more critical, that there’s a human behind it,” says Rinks. “You have to be real. You can’t fake  anybody out, Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha especially. They get it. They see.” 

Experiential stores 

Retail executives also predicted that the rise of AI will push more  consumers offline and into stores, making a company’s brick-and mortar presentation even more important. To differentiate  themselves, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Macy’s, and Sephora are all  focusing on curating experiential stores.

Rinks echoed that strategy. “We’re going to want more physical  interaction, rather than digital ones,” he says. “It’s going to get weird  with retail. I think they’re really going to have to focus on  experiences.” That is not a new strategy. Still, Rinks says stores centered around discovery and “the treasure hunt” will be the ones that stand  out, because “it just feels so good to find something that everybody  else doesn’t have.” 

UGC over influencers 

Magni says consumers are also feeling over-influenced and that brands  need to adjust their strategy when thinking about social media ads. “Influencers are becoming out of fashion pretty quickly. It’s not about the professional influencers that I should be listening to, because  they’re telling me stories, and they sponsor a brand,” Magni said on a panel at NRF. Instead, consumers are looking to their own networks  and communities for recommendations. “It’s about user-generated  content.It’s my peers.” 

Over-indexed on virality 

Influencers are not the only digital marketing lever that might be  extinguishing–or at least waning–for consumer brands. With the  future of TikTok still uncertain, founders should not bet on achieving viral success. Instead, Rinks says brands should focus on growing one customer at a time, like Sun Bum did after it launched in 2010. 

“They’re going to have to get back to the basics,” says Rinks, “and not  just rely on all this, the hype beast of everything happening with  TikTok.” 

All of the effort into going viral, he says, can be much more effectively harnessed. “I could be talking to one person. I could be having a one on-one connection with a person. That’s going to close that sale or get  them to be a part of our community,” he explains. “That’s what the  brands that I think are going to win do.” 

Sports power 

With an increasingly decentralized media landscape and fewer sitcoms  and dramas rising to the watercooler level of past shows like Game of  Thrones or Breaking Bad, Rinks argues there is really only one kind of  appointment television left for marketers: sports. 

He predicts, “Sports will continue to get bigger and larger advertising  hits.”