What a year 2024 was in the world of marketing technology! We witnessed the rapid growth of Generative AI applications and further growth in the number of new technologies and software providers. On reflection 2024 was a year of rapid change in the marketing world – some of it good and some maybe not so great.
As we look forward to 2025 there are some salutary lessons we should consider and, in many ways, these heavily influence my predictions for marketing and technology in the next 12 months.
As in previous years I have 3 predictions for the coming year so, lets dive straight in.
Customer wariness and swipe fatigue
Earlier this year I wrote a three-part series on next generation Generative AI which is published here. In it I explored the progression of the technology, which has without doubt opened a whole new world of potential for marketers. As we see the progression from its initial capabilities through multimodal deployments into neuro symbolic AI we will really start to see massive progression in the applicability, inclusiveness and delivery of responsible marketing solutions for our customers. However, we must ensure that we maintain the relationship and take the customer with us on this journey.
So, why am I including this as a prediction for 2025? Well, for those of you that follow global marketing trends you may have spotted several worrying early indicators that all is not well in the brand to customer relationship. I would classify the problem in two distinct groupings – the first I will describe as ‘swipe fatigue’ and the second as ‘customer trust’.
Many organizations target the Gen Z market heavily through digital channels and many use gamification, or targeting specific human emotions, to get this cohort of customers to engage. Using both to generate revenue is a point of friction that is leading us down a dark path. Gen Z customers are digital natives who are all too aware of the brands’ objectives and quickly become fatigued and often abandon, not just the channel, but the entire brand. As a direct consequence of this very thing, we have seen value wiped off companies on the stock market as customers vote with their feet and disengage with the brand.
The key to solving this dilemma is to apply constraint and practice a ‘responsible’ marketing approach. Marketers have an opportunity to make brand engagement fun and different using these new technologies. We must be fully inclusive in our marketing approach. The customer must be part of our strategy and a key element of our responsible marketing model as well.
Co-Creation
My second prediction for 2025 is around customer co-creation.
Many organizations over the years have worked with customers to create features or even whole products, but GenAI lets us take that to whole new level. Companies across several market sectors are starting to share ideas or partially developed products with customers and ask them to use tools like AI powered image generators to help develop the product to a final state. While a lot of these products remain concepts on the digital drawing board every submission and idea tells us something about our customers’ wants and needs, and how they see our brand. We can learn from this.
Organizations that have successfully adopted this approach include IKEA, that has a co-creation platform allowing customers ( or ‘fans’) to design new products using GenAI.
The LEGO Ideas platform encourages fans go use GenAI tools to build proposed Lego models, then users vote for their favourite (Lego has over 1 million people voting on the most popular designs). Successful creators can give final approval on the product and be recognized on all packaging and marketing material. They can even earn a percentage of product sales.
We even see examples from the fast-food industry, KFC invited customers to use Gen AI to create Meta stickers of their ideal KFC snack with the top 11 ideas being made for the winning contributors
Co-creation is a great way to engage customers and doesn’t require massive overheads like dedicated teams or specific allocated resources to get going. If you have never considered this as a potential approach, I certainly encourage you to do so now.
The growth of data-driven decision making
According to McKinsey, data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, 6 times more likely to retain them and 19 times more likely to be profitable. Who would not want to achieve those measures?
Data-driven decisioning assumes you can make decisions based on real information and insights and not on hypothesis or feeling. To achieve this your organization needs a means of on-boarding, assimilating and accessing data from multiple, often very diverse, data sources. One other distinction of data-driven decisioning is the fact that the collection, analysis, and insights are dynamic and happen whilst you are running the business as opposed to market research which tends to happen as an independent and often slightly limited one-off exercise.
There are numerous examples of organizations who already do this in various ways. The best known, and often quoted example, being Netflix which analyzed 30 million streamed plays, 4 million plus subscriber ratings and 3 million searches before they committed to developing series like House of Cards and Arrested Development which of course are fantastically successful
Another well-known example is of course Uber who use real-time data to inform customers of drivers available in the vicinity, but Uber also use the same data to balance the supply and demand needs of the business and to manage dynamic pricing in the most popular areas at the highest times of demand.
Coca Cola analyze social media data shared with them showing customers consuming their products to identify the best locations for creation of hyper-targeted advertisements which saw 4 times increase in click through rates.
Those are my predictions for the new year so happy marketing everyone and best wishes for a prosperous and fruitful 2025.