Blab #30: Marketing Predictions for 2025

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Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Marketing Labs podcast, hosted today by me, Mel Healey, head of Content at Marketing Labs. Today's pod is special for lots of reasons. It's my first time hosting, but it's also the season finale. This is our 30th pod since we started Marketing Labs two years ago. Joining me today are Matt Janway, CEO of Marketing Labs, Tom Haslam, creative director, Tilly Hayes, SEO executive. And last but not least, making his podcast debut. Kyle Walton, social and content executive and newest edition to the team. Welcome to you all and Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas Merry. We need a clap for that. Mel, press the clap. Which one's a clap button top? I dunno. Top. No,

But it is magical. Yeah,

To the pot. Kyle, thank you very much. Good to be here.

Welcome, right. Let's get started. So 2024 has been a great year for us for it's coming to a close and we're wrapping things up today with our season for Nly, but rather than looking back, I want to look forward, now is the perfect time to talk about what we can expect from next year. Now, there's a lot of experience sitting around this table, not calling you all, but there's a lot of experience. So we've seen marketing trends come and go over many years and by now you'd expect us to be pretty good at predicting what's coming next. So starting with Matt, what are you expecting to be high on the agenda for marketing managers next year?

Okay, so can I start with the prediction? I got wrong?

Okay. Yeah.

So I wrote a post, I think it was for search engine land about five years ago, about what's coming in 2020 I think it was, or maybe 2019.

And

I said that I think voice search will skyrocket. It sort of did, but not for marketing purposes. So I got that quite wrong. So I'll be sitting on the fence slightly more today.

Okay. You're not willing to commit to

Anything? No, no. I'll say then my top prediction, I think it has to be AI search engines. That's not necessarily Google, and this a big opportunity for people listening, big opportunity for marketers. It opens a brand new door that's never been there before. I think chat, GPT already have theirs, which some people are calling search GPT still in beta I think, but that will be coming next year and that will be big. I'm already seeing on Google Analytics accounts, sources from AI channels. So I think this is going to be a big opportunity.

So from a marketer's perspective, then, how can they start taking advantage of that new opportunity?

So we've always said, we've always been big advocates, haven't we? For producing content that adds value. So it's not just commercial content, it's content that users will love and it's content that is informative and that people will ask questions about. And that is going to be the best way of gaining attention from AI platforms and various LLMs. That alongside brand strength, both of those things I think will go a long way towards getting visibility.

So I mean, we're about to see lots of headlines, aren't we? SEO is dead. How many times have you read that in the last five

Years? I've had it every year, Mel, for 20 years.

And it is still here. We still live to tell

It's not changing, that's not going away. This last year people have been talking about the prevalence of TikTok search and that that's going to be damaging for Google and Google searches are increasing

Still.

It's not going away anywhere. It's just we now have the benefit of more channels, more opportunities to find your audience or your audience to find you. And this is just another one of those. Maybe search and Google and Bing will decline over the next 10 years, who knows? But there's no signs of it yet. SEO's not dead.

And in the meantime, keep creating useful content. I'm seeing a lot of our clients now appear in the search results for generative ai. So where it's summing up a response to a search query, clients are appearing in there because it's really useful content.

Well, when Google announced that, again, there was loads of panic, everyone was saying, oh, is SEO dying again? And actually analysing the data, if you've got results in those AI snippets actually click through, rates have gone up. So it's a good thing. It is just another one of those things where there's just so many naysayers, but actually generally it's a good thing if you can get them. It's a good thing.

Yeah. What's your second big prediction then?

Okay, so I think Blue Sky, the sort of Twitter alternative I think will blow up. Interesting. It's already started. They've overtaken threads, I believe.

Really?

Yeah. So I think that's going to be an opportunity for some, I dunno how that will work yet marketing wise, but certainly as a social network, I think that will continue growing. So there will be opportunity there and if people are producing content, it makes sense to repurpose that and get a Blue Sky account going. Also, Google have hinted that having an official Blue Sky account is potentially helpful for SEO because you can actually authenticate your account with your domain and link them together. So it is quite good for authenticity. Yeah, I think blue sky is, I dunno if it is going to set the world a light in terms of revenue and marketing, but I think as a new social network it's growing quickly.

I'll remind you of that in six months time when it's panned.

Yeah, it probably will. I've signed up. I'm getting some good engagement on there though. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So I heard if you work out just an average post of mine on LinkedIn, so I've got what, 20 odd thousand connections, followers, whatever you want to call it. And an average post of mine will get maybe, I dunno, 60 likes, something like that. Well, on Blue Sky I'm getting five to 10 and I've got 150 followers and that's growing. Fair enough. But the difference ratio of engaged people is really high at the moment.

Okay.

So yeah, it's a good time to jump on there now and take advantage of that engagement grow brand out on there.

So while we're on the topic then of social, I'll come to you Kyle, what are your top predictions for social marketing in 2025?

I think the big priority for me, it's not something that's new. It's not something that's just going to come around. It's something that's been growing for years and it's short form content, short form video content.

(07:47):

Now you see on more social platforms where it is getting a lot like TikTok where you open up Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, you're not getting your original homepage. You go into reels, you go into shorts, you go into those sort of things rather than your standard newsfeed. I think that's the big thing where we need to prioritise short form video content, what every other social media kind of platform is placing at the four point. So that would be the big thing for me in order for them to kind of grow in 2025, what we see the most of. That's what you are getting pushed at every kind of doorstep now you getting those 62nd long clips where that's what we'll see. Whether it be kind a behind the scenes sort of content, a more personalised kind of low kind of brand. I feel like they're the sort of ideas that we need to be pushing now of, I mean Ryan Air for an instance. And a lot of other companies are now using that short form content to kind of personalise themselves and move away from being a very corporate company. And I feel like the use of that short form content is allowing them to get a better understanding of an audience. People are looking at them now, not as just a company, not just as a corporate kind of on a Facebook to get the cells out there. They're now actually being a little bit more personal to people.

TikTok started this trend, didn't they? And when everybody saw how quickly TikTok exploded, all the other platforms really started pushing that short form video.

Absolutely.

Instagram moving to reels and yeah, they're all trying it really, aren't they? And they do get a lot of engagement, don't they? Yeah,

Yeah. LinkedIn also, now obviously we're seeing more video on there. I think that will continue, won't it? And something that companies need to embrace

Or video the main area where you get the highest click-through rates. Normally you get the most engagement from videos because it's relatable most of the time. Like Kyle said, it's more personal. So that's

Especially authentic ones.

Yeah, exactly. I think from a paid marketing social perspective as well, you definitely see high click-through rates and engagement through use of video. So implementing that short form content on all campaigns that you run is going to be beneficial, I think.

Can anybody think of any spectacular fails this year from a big company who's jumped on a TikTok trend and ruined it? I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Can't think of a TikTok trend, but I can think about Jaguar. I knew we were going to about Jaguar. Oh dear. No, but that's a good one. That's not necessarily social content, although they did repurpose the main ad for socials. But I think in terms of a campaign and a marketing campaign, I think our predicting that is going to be a fail

Unless

They're going to do something that's a bold statement, and I'm happy to eat my words by the way, but I just think that that's the way to not do it. And they're thrown an audience away overnight bold statements. It's

A fairly thing to do, isn't it?

But that's the use of video done wrong.

Unless when they do the launch they make a mockery of what they did and it was all just a marketing employee. And that might be genius. That would be genius to, I can't see that though.

Do you reckon that that Jaguar example feeds into the rise experimental content that we're seeing from brands?

Yeah, I think that's an example of not so personal video marketing in my opinion. It's not personal at all. Arguably

It's the opposite. It could be alienating for a lot of

People, but I think coming back to your question, Mel, with regards to TikTok trends and things, you see short form video from a marketing perspective coming in for TikTok shop and things like that where you see influencers and things marketing, but what's that product called? I can't think off the top of head. Needo. Yeah, the Needo cube. People have gone mad for that Needo cube and that's all just come from short form video on TikTok.

Yeah. What about, do you think then, Tom, that influencer marketing will continue to grow? Is that likely to still be a thing in 2025 or are we seeing the end of that now as people become a bit more savvy?

No, I don't think we'll see the end of influencer marketing. I just think that we'll see changes in what influencers have been used across specific channels and things like that. I think when it comes to influencers, it can be quite hard for brands to choose which influencers going to be right for them. So for example, I'm thinking a company that sells tents, an ideal influence for them would be someone who goes out on regular hikes, they've got decent audience, they're outdoors all the time, they've tested the tent and that's a perfect use case and I think it's more a case of not people who are in the direct public eye, if that makes sense. It's like small micro influencers that are going to be more prominent in my opinion.

Yeah, they do say don't they, that there is a sweet spot to the number of followers that an influencer has that makes it more less

Effecti. It's not just about the followers though effective, it's about how much engagement they get If they get a lot of engagement on the post and people go, oh wow, that looks great. Or even just, oh, I don't really like the look of that is engagement is engagement and that's the thing that is the most important there.

Yeah, I mean if you were Jaguar right now, who would your go-to cel celebrity to endorse that product?

I reckon it'd have to be Kanye West or someone like that.

Yeah, Nick Minaj.

Nick, yeah, Nick Mage for that new Miami pink one.

Yeah, you can imagine Ball over times zero, zero, whatever they've called it.

Tilly, what are your big predictions for 2025?

As I mentioned just then, I think more experimental content from brands. I think there's this desire to be extra disruptive and a bit of a shock factor, even if it's for the wrong reasons. I'm sure Jaguar are kind of thinking, oh we've got attention, but some attention can be good attention sometimes. So I think that'll be a trend that'll be on the rise next year. And also I did find some stats on voice search. Mark

Did you? Nice totally stats.

I thought you were going back five years, weren't you? So apparently in 2019 there was 3.25 billion searches by voice search and it's now 8 billion in 2023, so I imagine it's even higher now.

Oh yeah, it'd be huge, but

I think it's just brands need to think about how they can be using sort of conversational natural language in their content and how they would go about designing elements of content that are in that format to

Help. It's getting harder as well, isn't it? Because most smart speakers now, or most smart devices when you search the device itself is answering not content on the internet. So even though there are that many searches, the number of those that actually has to fall back on doing a search on the internet is quite small I think. Although that still will be growing just because the prevalence of smart speakers, that is a market that is still growing. So yeah.

How do we reckon, obviously Apple, we've got Siri, how do we reckon other voice searches?

Well, apple Intelligence is coming out in the UK this week I think, or next week, so that could be a big one for

Next year. Yeah,

Yeah, it's hard to say. Google assistant as well sounds like it's also moving into a new version, which is going to be more Gemini based. I think that is now available in beta on Google Pixel devices, so that might also make its way to Android more. But this is, I don't know if that's more or less of an opportunity because AI answering on your phone, it doesn't necessarily always need to fall back on the internet to get its information. It's already learned it, so it's just the phone answering. It's just an AI answering, so it's hard to say. I do agree that that's definitely going to be a change this year. I'm just not sure what change it will bring.

Yeah, it's quite hard one for me to understand I think because I can't think of really ever using voice search myself.

Do you not use it much?

I only use it for my own kind of systems. Like on Spotify for example. I use it then, but I won't use it to search for stuff.

No, I absolutely agree. I can't think of a time where I've actually used voice search. When Siri first came out, that was obviously a huge deal, but I can't actually think of a time where I've used

That

To help me in any way. It probably is in a way, maybe I'm using it to its fullest potential, but I can't think of a time where I've actually gone, oh, I'll use this Siri for this. That's going to be quicker than doing it manually. I

Think if I put a player use case to voice search, I use it in my car. I'm lucky enough to have that. So obviously while you're driving, Hey Google play Nicki Minaj, that's just easy and then it'll just specific songs. But I don't think just agreeing Mac car, I don't think I've used it for

Information,

Just sat at my desk upstairs. If one of us shouted out, Hey, Google search for this, we probably all look around what's he doing? I

Think that's the thing. It tends to be people looking for things when they're on the go or locally convenience. And to me it's just like I don't want to be speaking out loud

When I, it's a bit of an embarrassment, isn't it though, when you actually have to, that's why I wonder. So I'm just thinking of my use case as well because I think my use case might be different to most, to be honest. It's probably slightly unique, but I do use it a lot. However, thinking about what you and Kyle have just said there, I probably use it 30 or 40 times a day, but it's all stuff like smart set your

Microwave timer

Automations. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is things like turn the music off, play my morning playlist, turn the lights on, that kind of stuff. Informational searches. I think you're right. I actually can't remember the last time I used it for an informational purpose other than read the news maybe every now and then

Or the weather or something. Maybe

The weather, but I do use it a lot, but not in the sense that where it would need to go and retrieve information that could be used for a company, if that

Makes sense. How about you? I've took my off because I'm absolutely sweltering, but how about if you flip it on its head then because you are quite tech savvy, how about if we go even ultra granular with voice search and say that it's going to be more prominent in the tech industry? So for, I dunno, speaker companies or music and things like that as opposed to broadly speaking, voice search or

Whatever. Yeah, I think we forget sometimes that AI has an impact across so many different areas. We're so focused on marketing, we're always thinking about how AI can help or hinder marketing. But actually if you think about Apple intelligence as an example in the new Google, the Gemini one that's being included on pixel phones, actually a lot of what it does is nothing related to what we do. It's like you're writing a message and it'll finish your sentence or you're reading an email and it'll summarise it or you've not looked at your phone for two hours, you've got 20 notifications, it'll summarise your notifications. That's nothing to do with marketing at all, it's just more quality of life improvements in devices. Efficiencies. Efficiencies, exactly. But all of those contribute towards those voice searches. I'm just not sure how many of those really will be an opportunity for marketers. I'm sure there will be some, but it's hard to say what that looks like. I think.

Is there anything we've missed? Any other big predictions that anybody has that we've not covered?

Personalization, we see it from big brands like Netflix and Amazon.

Yeah,

So Amazon for example, they'll try and target you based on your browsing behaviour, every step of the shopping journey. I feel like lots of brands will maybe try and do that, I dunno about next year, but definitely in the future

And you could take that over as well out of video on demand through to everything like email, like e-commerce, shopping, Amazon, use this quite a lot with things that it thinks you might like. Again, that's uses AI to try to understand hyper personalised shopping experiences

Frequently bought together as well. You see that all the time, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I agree actually TILs, I think the more AI matures, the more especially in e-commerce, I think the more it will get used. You only really see it at the moment in big stores. I think we might start seeing that across smaller businesses.

Yeah. What about retargeting your clients for PPC? Are you seeing more or less of that in a cookie lu world?

Yeah, retargeting I think is more important than ever. Obviously cookies and things like that and cookie list marketing has been around anyway,

But it's how clients get around that. I always say you have to have a retargeting list if you're using social ads, it is quite important or at least have a segment of a retargeting list alongside some others. But yeah, I think how that is put together, again, I think AI will be able to help with that. It's more improvements on lookalikes of those retargeting lists. So once you've imported a client lists CSV file from MailChimp for example, how platforms like Facebook and Instagram put together that lookalike, I think that will improve as time goes on. And AI generated lookalikes and things like that might be a prediction of mine. But yeah, I think retargeting is always going to be prominent when it comes to paid social and PPC to be fair. I think how those are put together though is who knows,

Just on that note, this is a prediction but it's not an opportunity. I predict tracking will continue getting harder.

I think big tech companies now are really realising that people care about their data and about being tracked around the internet. I do, but again, I know I'm probably an extreme use case, but I think generally the everyday public is also starting to, apple have really jumped on this. They've got intelligent tracking blocking on all of their devices now if they think a cookie is being manipulated, they just stop it. I think other tech platforms will also start realising that people care about being tracked. Everybody. When you speak to somebody about technology or about marketing, do you know what is one of the most common things I've heard in the last couple of years that all of your devices are listening to you? Everyone always says that people are concerned about being listened to, about being followed, about being advertised to. I think, but that's going to be a hindrance, not an opportunity in my opinion. So I think tracking might get a bit harder.

Yeah, I agree. Tom, you had some other predictions.

Yeah, from a creative slash brand experience, obviously AI generated design and stock imagery and things, I've always been having a little play around with Firefly, but Adobe Firefly that's getting really good now it is all down to the prompt that you put into it. I still think there's a lot of legwork that the like of Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator need to do in terms of creating vector graphics and from that perspective. But in terms of imagery creation, we see websites like Adobe stock implementing more AI generated imagery and I think some of that's actually really, really good. There's cases now where you can actually input a reference and how close you want it to be to that reference, how realistic you want it to be, how strong you want it to link to a specific composition. So there's more prompts that is building. So I think that will grow.

And then the one that I was most excited about was dynamic branding. I think how websites deliver visual identities to audiences will be dynamic or get more dynamic. So it is tailoring that visual experience for people based on their interests. What that looks like, I'm not sure, but I think dynamic branding will come into play and dynamic experiences on both apps and websites. I think that could be quite good. Different or navigation processes, you might like something specific. So let's say we both use the same website but we both have bought different things in the past, then it's going to navigate me to a different place. It knows that I like that and then you a different place just trying to justify it for someone who might be listening. I think that might be,

You could maybe even, I dunno if this is a thing or will become a thing, but you could probably use what you know about the visitor to display certain types of content as well.

Yeah, exactly.

So if someone might like video, someone might not, someone might like reading content, someone might not. That would be

Interesting. Yeah, absolutely. I'm more of a visual person so I'll definitely watch a video over reading a piece of content, whereas I know you guys like reading content so it might get a blog post up there for you or whatever. So yeah, I think that might come into play a little bit more. And sustainability within branding, sustainable brands, how people can come across as a more, I dunno, eco-friendly brand might become more, we've seen it gradually becoming more prominent over the last five years, but I think it might ramp up a bit in the next few.

Okay, that's interesting

Just on the basis of that because I feel like that's why Jaguar has done their big thing now they're moving towards those electric cars so they're trying to make a bit more sustainable. Do you see in say in a couple of years time a lot more companies actually trying to rebrand move away from what their want were to something not say completely different, but I mean in Jaguar's quite different. Do you see a lot more brands actually completely changing what they once were to go for a kind of new more sustainable

Future? Yeah, we've seen the rise of Debranding quite a lot in terms of people simplifying or minimalizing what their brand once was. In terms of a rebrand though, I think it's got to be done for the right purpose. I think we were talking about this yesterday, Mel, the fact Jaguar has done it because their audience was dying, but it's still an audience. And I used the example of how Volvo created Polestar as a separate brand. They still had a brand with Volvo or an audience with Volvo and they didn't chuck that away overnight by rebranding to something completely different that no one's familiar with. They created Polestar or purchased. I'm not quite sure the ins and outs of it, but they did that. But yeah, I think, yeah, who knows When it comes to a rebrand, sometimes we see disaster of people changing completely, hopefully not for in Jaguars case, but I think there's been a few where people have just completely been alienated by the visual side of it.

It's a risky move, isn't it? Because I think we live in a day and age now where everything is so polarised you could easily upset the wrong people and potentially some or all of your audience. But at the same point we also live in a world where everybody expects everything to be black and white.

Everything's

Sensationalised and you can't really be vanilla and succeed sometimes, especially on social. So you've got to do something that's quite out there or creative or spontaneous or something that's a bit special, but you are then risking alienating people.

I think it's more the resurgence of minimalism, I guess going ultra minimal and coming back to the dbrand thing, how brands are really simplifying that experience and that visual identity I think's going definitely shape the next few years rather than going ultra bold 3D, drop shadows. Drop shadows.

I'd say there's, if anything, there's a rise in people being going over simple. I think

So I think I would agree as well,

Yeah, you see brands like Balenciaga, Chanel, I mean these are

Fashion, don't

They?

Yeah, it's like no one's standing out anymore in some industries and it's just quite boring in my opinion. If

You looked at one of those logos together, heve sent Lauren,

But

They're all black and

White

Se fonts and they all look the same. Yeah, I get that.

A lot of brands are doing that though, even outside of fashion, everyone seems to be just going so minimal, which I think in some ways is good and that clearly has been a trend for maybe the last couple of years. Do you see that continuing then?

Yeah, I do, but I think if it was me, I'd keep the visual identities in the logo and the colours minimal and simple, but I think beyond that it's how your further brand is developed with marketing such as what imagery goes with that. If you're an e-commerce site, how does the site look in comparison? You can really simplify and strip something down to its bare bones, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing for the audience, does it? We all know that. But yeah, I think more prominent in terms of minimalism and experiences.

So for anybody out there listening who is a marketing executive or manager, but they work on their own that they're holding up the whole department and they're trying to balance all of this new things and maintaining the status quo, what would your advice be? Where do they start?

In my opinion, you've just always got to focus on it is quite simple actually. You've just always got to focus on where is most commercially viable. This is one of the most common mistakes we see and I think we must have mentioned this on five or six podcasts now, but be where your audience is, be where generates your revenue. You can spend so much of your time spreading yourself so thin by trying to do so many different things. And actually in reality, most of your money probably comes from a few channels and I think just try to focus on those.

Do you think there is a sort of fatigue among digital marketers who are just a bit overwhelmed with trying to keep up with what's new? It's a very rapidly evolving industry that we're working and it can feel at times to be quite exhausting.

I think that's one of the main benefits of being agency side. You see a lot across a lot of clients. You can keep up with what's happening in the industry in technology it's much more difficult to do that I think so. Yeah, absolutely.

So as a marketing manager, you're just tied to that one brand business, aren't you? We get holistic view

Of

Multiple industries,

Absolutely, but also I think I do agree. I think there's definitely fatigue there. I think there's also probably fatigue with just how many things they have to keep on top of as well. The expectations that a marketing executive or a marketing manager might go into a business and they've got to look after all the social networks, they've got to be involved in content, they've got to be involved in SEO, they've got to involved in maybe ads, social ads, PPC, all of these different things. And I think what we're probably seeing is a lack of specialisms and people who can do a bit of lots of things

And stretch too thin

And stretch too thin. And so I think there's fatigue from lots of different angles actually, and I think people are going to get worn out pretty quickly. My advice genuinely would be to just try to laser focus as an individual, but also as businesses just target and focus on the things where your audience is and that is driving performance. And yet, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying ignore everything else, but it really doesn't need to be the main focus.

No, no. There needs to be a balance, doesn't there a split. Okay, so of the marketing predictions that we've spoken about today, then thinking about that, are any of them likely to be absolutely non-negotiable in 2025? Something that you have to wrap your head around, you will have to grapple with it. I guess the tracking and the cut down on that is one thing, isn't it?

Yeah, that's definitely, but also it's even if you try to figure out solutions, you're not going to find a perfect solution. I think we have to accept in this day and age that I saw a conversation yesterday actually about an investor wanting to figure out cost per conversion from SEO and from organic channels. How do you even begin to start working that out? Where do you start? Firstly, none of the data is really readily available or very little of it. Some is, don't get me wrong. But secondly, almost every transaction now has so many different touch points. It is almost impossible to figure out what that looks like. You might google something and you might buy straight away and you might not know who the brand is, however, the next visitor might already know who the brand is. They might have awareness of it, they might have clicked the result in Google because they were aware of the brand, but then the next one might not have even clicked from Google. They might have clicked from social, but they might have found them from Google, another one they might've had multiple social touchpoints, your TikTok and Instagram and then something else and not been involved in Google or a paid ad. And you've got a combination of 10, 20 different channels across hundreds and thousands of potentially millions of different visitors. You just can't work that out. I think what you have to accept is understand where your audience is, understand how they behave, understand as best you can, where your revenue comes from and try to use that to determine what's working and what isn't. It's hard, but there isn't many better ways

For some businesses that might be two channels, some it might be multiple channels.

But I think pinning onto what Matt said, I would say that the most important thing to do after Christmas would be plan, whether that's quarterly, six monthly, yearly, put a plan together in terms of what channels you want to be active on. Have a look if you've got the data in terms of what channels perform the best last year, if you've not got that, then you might have to be just a lot of testing at least initially. But if you've got the data and you know that you get a lot of revenue from SEO ads and paid social and you've been doing six other channels on top of that, just focus on those three and put budgets together for those three and what you want to do and

Be consistent.

Exactly.

This is the thing, if you know who your audience is, where they hang out, you're pretty sure where your revenue comes from. Just be as consistent as you can be and just monitor the data and the data you can access. And if you continue being consistent and following that plan in theory, it should be very helpful. Isn't it interesting though, just as a passing comment on this, this is across agencies but also I think individuals, when somebody is starting out in marketing, a lot of the conversations will result in, I don't know, but I'll investigate and I'll find out. As somebody becomes more expert in a field, the answers become more, yes, I know the answer, this is it. But actually as you continue becoming more of an expert, you come back to actually, I don't know. And it's a similar thing with tracking. The people who are genuinely experts will say to you, we don't actually know fully, we know a lot of things, but some things we can't just give you an answer for. I think somebody who is probably less experienced will try to give an answer all the time and sometimes you just can't.

And it does depend. It depends on so many things.

Yeah, I think the comforting thing for marketers next year is there's unlikely to be another big surprise, like a chat GPT that sort of exploded suddenly into the public conscience and changed the way that we worked. I can't see that happening next year.

It's almost once in a generation that isn't it.

Yeah,

It's a bit like when Google came around, it was a once in a generation thing that exploded. Similar with a few social networks, TikTok as well. But you're probably right there

I think. Yeah, I think we're just going to see more of the same thing, aren't we? So like Kyle said, short form video, it's not new, but we'll keep seeing that increase in use. Matt, coming to you again, what do you see happening with augmented reality next year?

So I dunno whether it's going to explode, it probably won't to be honest. And the technology is still quite early days, but I suspect at some point soon Apple will release a cheaper version of the vision. I mean the vision pros, I think they start at nearly three grand and go to like five. So it's not really accessible for most people. And I think there will be a cheaper one who knows how that will perform, but I think it will probably bring it to mass market. That might be 2025, might be 2026. What generally tends to happen is when Apple launches a product like that, other companies then follow suit. And even though they might not necessarily be trailblazers in terms of the product, and it might not even be the bestseller, it does build audience and I think that audience will grow. So what that looks like as well for marketing, I think there are opportunities. Video obviously is the big one there. I dunno how that will relate to social. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But what I do see happening and growing is video advertisement on things like live sports. It's hard to explain this unless someone's tried it,

But if you watch say a basketball game or a football game on the Vision Pro, it is unbelievable. You're literally SAT court side, you can change where you're sitting. You can literally see everything happening. You feel like you can grab the ball. The person is actually ridiculous. Alicia Keys has an intimate gig on it, which again is not necessarily sport related but still video related. It's just her in a studio and she walks up to you and sings and you literally feel like she's singing to you and with you. So the reason I'm saying this is I think there's big opportunity there for advertising more so in the sports because you've got the billboards around the edge, you've got all of the, when they're showing the team, the formations, all of those kinds of things where you can get your logo on there. I think that over time will be big. And I think also app stores, so the app stores for these platforms will continue to grow. So again, there's potentially advertising opportunities there.

What about product placement?

So

That's something that can be weaved into it.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a good point Mel. So especially we're already starting to see on the Vision Pro now more new content that's specific to the Vision Pro. So it has a depth, you can, it's not 3D, this is the thing, this is why it's hard to explain unless somebody's actually immersed themselves in it, because it's not 3D, it's entirely different to 3D, it's just full augmented reality. So shows that are now created specifically for augmented reality, they feel very different. So absolutely, you could imagine that playing a big part of marketing. I think in future, dunno whether it'll be in 2025, that's the thing, it's probably a couple of years away still, but there's big opportunity there. I think Video on demand, we talked about Netflix earlier, tills again, things like that through augmented reality devices. I think there's again, marketing opportunity there and try one by the way, seriously, I think everyone should just go into an Apple store and try one because until you've tried it, it's hard to understand just what it is. But it really is different. It's not what you expect, it's not virtual reality. And I think the more people try it, the more ideas they'll have, how they can take advantage of the audience when the audience is there.

It's a real opportunity to be creative, isn't it? Because it's an entirely different sort of platform that designers are going to have to get their head around

And first mover advantage will be big. This is the kind of thing that creates brand new markets and if you get in there first with something good, you can cement a brand for generations. Potentially it's that big, but it might still be too soon.

Yeah, something to think about for the future. All that remains to be said then is Merry Christmas to all of our listeners, unless you're listening to this in January, in which case happy New Year. We hope you enjoyed the festive season finale of the Marketing Clubs podcast and a huge thank you to Matt, Tom Tilly and Kyle sharing their insights and expertise today. It's been a fantastic 30 episodes and long mate, continue. See you on the other side.

See you later. Cheer Christmas everyone.

Bye.