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1. Data fatigue and downtime: why CMOs need to rethink
The economic upturn has been postponed until 2025. In 2024, a corporate fatigue has increasingly spread among CMOs that resembles a new epidemic. They are increasingly relying on security, on activities that have worked before. The pressure to justify every investment down to the last cent in terms of its impact and business success is seen as an indispensable factor. This thinking is not new, but it comes at the long-term expense of the brand, as it leaves no room for experimentation.
Data-driven marketing alone, especially through pure performance approaches, is not the solution in the long term. We need a KPI rethink, since digital KPI-based marketing could soon reach its peak: All companies are investing in the same platforms and systems that increasingly rely on automation. Playing on these platforms has become a hygiene factor. If you're not here, you won't even be noticed. And those who do not differentiate themselves through creativity do not want to be noticed - on the platform and outside it.
2. Agencies: creativity, silo-free innovation & thought leadership
How do brands differentiate themselves in increasingly saturated markets? With strong partners at their side who offer perspectives, fight for creativity and promote innovation. We therefore believe that in the future, brands will benefit from agencies that combine creativity, brand expertise and digital know-how - and can thus orchestrate multifaceted projects. This combination has the potential to bring about transformative change for brands and companies.
Strong brands are already benefiting from their market penetration, which makes their marketing budgets more effective. The platform economy further reinforces the importance of strong brands, as AI and digital assistants will increasingly prioritize established brands. In a future where digital assistants suggest number one and two, securing visibility and influencing algorithms through creative brand building will be critical.
It's clear to us, agencies will increasingly move towards brand management, strategic consulting and silo-free innovation. As more and more tasks become automated and standardized, the focus will be on creating smart solutions and creative thinking that combine digital and physical to strengthen brands. For agencies to be perceived as such, their natural thought leadership - including through personal branding - must be organically integrated into their corporate culture and communicated to the outside world.
3. Rebalancing brand activities: Activation vs. brand building
The eternal discussion. What we see: Budget constraints are causing brands to re-evaluate their marketing investments. The trend of relying heavily on activation-based (digital) advertising will diminish over the next 1-2 years, especially as the loss of trackability reduces its impact and brand will become increasingly important in the context of AI search behavior change. The focus is increasingly on creating brand experiences that resonate culturally, trigger emotions and have meaning on a deeper, human level. We therefore believe that brand building is becoming more important again. The key here is to find a balance between investing in long-term brand strategies and short-term sales activations, as Binet & Field have been suggesting since 2013. HINT: 60/40, but the right balance is still very individual; it depends on a variety of factors such as the size, maturity, innovativeness of a company, category and many more. In any case, we expect CMOs to evaluate more carefully where brands allocate their communication budget in the future.
4. Niche is pop: brands must become more dynamic in 2025
Niche culture is the new pop culture. Understanding its intricacies to add value to these communities will be a growth driver in the coming years. Common brand theory says that brands develop long-term relevance through consistency - and that's true. However, to be relevant to niche cultures, more dynamic mindsets need to be adopted, because brands are only what they are in people's minds. Therefore, they must be willing to accept different meanings to allow for diverse associations. The twist here is to keep this meaning consistent for both the brand and the niche it wishes to identify with.
For instance, take the anime sector. An area that has seen huge growth over the last five years and has fandoms that can be compared to sports team loyalty. Luxury fashion brands have recognized this and are increasingly testing this area through collaborations with well-known studios: LOEWE x Studio Ghibli or Jimmy Choo, which created a shoe collection in the Sailor Moon theme. These brands are trying to reach relatively untapped target groups to find exceptional touchpoints in less crowded markets. They accept that this is branded content and not controlled advertising - which can lead to different meanings for the brand. We expect to see more brand collabs in this form in other categories in 2025.
5. Man with machine: From juniors to agencies
Humans and machines are constantly finding new ways to cooperate. AI has been deeply rooted in agencies since 2024 - it acts as the new 'juniors' and accompanies the entire workflow. Keyword: increased efficiency. However, despite this new support, one thing remains clear: creative excellence is not created by machines, but by people. While AI can handle repetitive tasks and processes, the added value lies in human creativity, strategic thinking, empathy and the ability to shape complex contexts into new ideas.
In 2025, the question arises as to how this human creativity can be supplemented by tools for divergent thinking - such as an unsystematic AI that is willing to experiment. However, especially in times of recession and crisis, automation tools (“Salesforce-ization”) have a firm place in the marketing industry. Nevertheless, they remain tools that create the foundation for human-driven results. Excitingly, these SAAS tools will face massive competition from AI agents in the coming years (more on this in the following section).
6. AI becomes more personal: Notebook LM & ConversationalAI agent Voiceflow
The abundance of AI-powered tools shows no signs of abating. Notebook LM& Conversational AI show two exciting developments that have one thing in common: Giving users more control.
Notebook LM
Notebook LM is a personalized, conversation-based AI research assistant designed to facilitate the journey from information to insight. Powered by Google's Gemini Pro 1.5, it allows you to interact with your sources - and get answers in a format that suits you best: Text, podcasts, study guides, TV scripts and more.
Just remember, you are what you eat - this also applies to knowledge. The quality of the output depends on the sources. An added benefit: Notebook LM doesn't use your input to train itself. Your information and conversations remain private - if that's what you want. While many use cases focus on private 'second-brain' creation to reduce information overflow or small collaborative research projects, new possibilities will emerge as additional features are added. For example, the integration of multimedia sources and the generation of multimedia responses.
Conversational AI-Agent Voiceflow
Unlike an AI agent, a chatbot works like a question-and-answer game with fixed rules. As long as you say the right thing, it answers correctly. However, don't deviate from the script! AI agents such as Voiceflow are smarter: they understand you even if you express yourself differently, keep the context of a conversation in mind and can respond accordingly. This makes them perfect for customer support, voice assistants or even interactive learning platforms. They are the next generation of digital conversation partners that don't just spit out answers, but understand what you mean.
Voiceflow, digitalwerk & Webflow
At digitalwerk, we use the low-code tool Voiceflow, which can be used to create AI chatbots for customer service, onboarding and sales without programming. Voiceflow also supports the integration of existing GPTs and enables personalized customer communication along the entire customer journey. The Canadian company with 52 employees and over 75,000 users offers an API for simple connections to platforms such as Webflow and Shopify.
Webflow and other low-code platforms continue their growth trend and are increasingly conquering the enterprise and B2B market. With user-friendly functions, Webflow helps companies to present their brand effectively and increase the value of their offers - which has a positive impact on visitor numbers and sales. One example of this is the successful launch of BYD Austria in 2024, which confirms this trend.
As a certified Webflow partner agency with many years of no-code experience, we support marketing teams in creating interactive and performant websites quickly and efficiently - without the usual obstacles such as limited technical know-how, lengthy development processes or communication gaps between design and development. This year, the Webflow platform has become even better. Webflow's new Website Experience Platform (WXP) offers advanced analysis and optimization tools such as “Webflow Analyze” and “Webflow Optimize”, which enable detailed performance data as well as A/B testing and AI-supported A/B testing directly in Webflow. The new Page Builder makes it easier to quickly create landing pages, while the GSAP integration enables engaging animations. These advances reinforce our focus on creating innovative, personalized and powerful web experiences for our customers.
7. “Zero Clicks” & Gen AI - Performance & SEO need diversification
An important trend that is further reinforced by AI is “zero clicks” - search engines answer questions directly without redirecting to external websites. This makes SEO and SEA much more difficult, as platforms are interested in keeping users on their own sites and creating more advertising opportunities. Generative AI further exacerbates this issue as it undermines the traditional model where content providers profit through traffic from search engines. This development could fundamentally change performance marketing. We recommend diversifying and not relying on just one platform. Before this happens, however, there will be a peak in campaign booking and playout due to AI. Automated P-Max campaigns, or Microsoft Performance Max, Pinterest Performance+, Amazon Performance+ and Meta Advantage+ will play a major role in 2025. However, this optimization and efficiency mantra will also come to an end because only stereotypes in the target groups will be served. Everyone uses the same tools and works with the same marketers and platforms.
With functions such as Circle to Search, Google has pushed image-based search very strongly. Building on Google Lens, this AI-powered technology is taking visual search from niche to mainstream. As Google has recently expanded Circle to Search results - now with AI summaries, knowledge panels and more - it's crucial for brands to optimize for this. For SEO experts, it will be even more important to optimize descriptions, image names, EXIF data and other parameters - especially in e-com this could become more important. Circle to Search and Buy Apple will also follow suit in Europe in 2025.
With the ongoing development of language technology, “speakable content” will become a key element in future SEO strategies. Brands should prepare for the fact that people will increasingly interact with their smart assistants instead of typing. Here are four areas where speakable content will shape SEO trends in 2025:
- Voice Search Optimization: Due to the increasing use of voice-controlled devices, content must be adapted to natural language and question-based formats.
- Conversational SEO: Optimization for natural language patterns is essential to be preferred by smart assistants in search results.
- Content-Format: Content should be organized into easily digestible sections such as bullet points or lists to increase the likelihood of being selected by voice assistants.
- Brand Interaction: Dialogue-based content creates new opportunities for interaction with users via platforms such as Google Assistant or Apple Intelligence in 2025.
8. Flexible character: brand design systems
In a world characterized by dynamic platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, it is clear that branding goes far beyond the logo. This is becoming less and less important as flexible and dynamic branding systems come to the fore. Brands that want to be successful in the long term must remain visually appealing and adaptable at the same time in order to remain relevant at different touchpoints.
The challenge is to find the balance between consistency and adaptability. A static logo is not enough to resonate on dynamic platforms. Brands need modular design systems that adapt flexibly to different contexts and target groups without losing their identity. This requires skill, but also the knowledge and willingness to allow different meanings for your own brand.
One example of this is PayPal. As Brand New magazine describes, the new design offers a “more streamlined, flexible, and relatively sophisticated design foundation for PayPal to build on in different ways and speak to multiple audiences.” The logo fades into the background, while the overall image of the brand becomes more versatile and adaptable.
A second trend: the return to character
Another example is Burberry's 2023 rebrand, which marked a significant shift in the branding world. With the return of the Equestrian Knight icon and a nod to the historic logo, Burberry is once again focusing on personality and character - a clear signal of brands increasingly going back to their roots to integrate more emotional depth and authenticity into their identity.
9. Flexible modules: The standard in web design
The future of web design clearly lies in modularity. Component-based design makes it possible to develop visually appealing and at the same time functionally versatile modules that can be used and adapted flexibly. A pioneer of this trend is Lattice, where elaborate design elements are used repeatedly without losing visual or functional quality. Here, design and functionality merge into a single unit that helps brands to remain consistent yet dynamic.
Another example is the BYD Austria website. The component-based approach allows marketing departments to customize modules based on customer data and analytics information. This flexibility makes it possible not only to make the website visually appealing, but also to continuously optimize its performance. Customers are able to design their modules dynamically and change them based on data analysis, which can improve both the user experience and the conversion rate.
Instead of following rigid layouts, brands can design their websites modularly and continuously develop them further. Providers such as Webflow play a central role in this. They offer creative teams the tools to implement their ideas without technical barriers and at the same time take full advantage of a flexible, component-based system. This not only makes web design more efficient, but also more creative and adaptable.
Conclusion
2025 will be a year of realignment - old formulas will die. While data-driven marketing is reaching its limits, the importance of genuine, emotional brand experiences is growing. If you want to be at the forefront, you can't just collect click figures, you also have to tell and embody stories that will tear people away from their indifference.
These people create their own meanings with a brand. The most important thing is to steer these meanings in a favorable direction. Modular designs and dynamic branding systems help promote a desired brand identity on fast platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Tools like Voiceflow & Webflow support this by mastering the balancing act between creative freedom and efficiency - empowering marketing teams to make communication faster and more personal.
The challenge for 2025 is a game of balance and adaptability. Those who have the courage to question the tried and tested and look to the future of brands with a willingness to experiment will certainly not score an own goal in 2025.
