In 2025, technology must serve as the servant of the personal, particularly as consumers and clients have higher expectations that organisations and brands will understand their preferences, needs, and behaviours.
PERSONALISATION IN 2025
The marketing landscape continues to change and evolve rapidly due to technological advances, evolving consumer behaviours and shifts within the marketing industry.
Three things that brought changes in 2024 were
● Greater integration of AI into marketing.
● Greater emphasis on sustainable and inclusive marketing; and
● The dominance of Digital Advertising by Tech Giants.
In a rapidly changing landscape that seems to be dominated by big corporations and major Tech companies with large marketing budgets, it is easy to become caught up in comparisons and feel we must try new trends to get our message heard above the noise of other messages and ads.
The beginning of 2025 is a good time to remember the fundamental principles of marketing that remain true despite the changes and the impact of technology. Principles that can guide our marketing and messaging in the year ahead.
The priority of the personal
A fundamental principle that is easily forgotten in a world dominated by technology and the rapid advance in AI is the priority of the personal approach.
Personalisation is a marketing term that refers to tailoring messages, content, and experiences to meet customers' unique preferences, behaviours, and needs. Ultimately, the effectiveness of technology and AI depends on how well it helps a brand or company understand individuals' unique preferences, behaviours, needs, and pain points so that they can communicate at a personal level.
In 2025, technology must serve as the servant of the personal, particularly as consumers and clients have higher expectations that organisations and brands will understand their preferences, needs, and behaviours.
However, prioritising the personal is multifaceted. This is often forgotten in the excitement of a new campaign. Brands and marketers narrow the personal to one aspect – creating personal messages for their clients. Other factors are necessary for a brand to demonstrate they are listening to and prioritising clients. These include:
● Trust and Privacy.
● Relevancy and Consumer Fatigue
● Sustainability and Ethics
Trust and Privacy
Trust and privacy are non-negotiable for consumers.
One of the consequences of technological advances and growth in AI is the vast amount of data that can be collected. As the capacity and ease with which more data can be collected, consumers have become increasingly wary about how their information is collected and used.
Trust is now a critical factor for consumers when engaging with a brand.
For brands and businesses, this means:
● Being transparent and communicating clearly about data practices and how the data is used.
● Empowering clients with control over their information and how much they provide.
● Adopting privacy-first approaches such as first-party data and offering opt-in consent.
These are ways brands and businesses can demonstrate they are listening to clients' concerns about data and privacy and building trust, which is crucial to building lasting customer relationships.
Relevancy and Overcoming Consumer Fatigue
Ironically, the rise of technology and the increasing use of AI have led to a surge in consumer marketing fatigue. Consumers are tired of irrelevant messages and the influx of impersonal content. When consumers become fatigued, brands risk alienating and losing customers for life.
Economics has been part of the reason for the influx of impersonal content. Marketers have had to balance increased costs and reduced budgets while meeting brand and customer needs. The ease with which AI can generate content has been seen as an easy solution to this balancing act. However, the consequence has been a rise in non-personalised content irrelevant to many customers.
To combat this fatigue and irrelevance, brands must prioritise personal, relevant messages in every strategy. It is also important to remember the power of organic marketing. With the rising costs of paid marketing, the power of organic marketing to generate traffic naturally should never be forgotten.
To combat fatigue and irrelevance, brands must prioritise personal, relevant messages in every strategy.
Sustainability and ethics
Consumers are more socially and environmentally conscious than ever before. Sustainability has shifted from being a ‘buzzword’ that businesses can utilise to a fundamental expectation consumers have for the companies and brands they support.
Examples of companies that have set benchmarks in integrating sustainability into their marketing include Patagonia. Their “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign encouraged consumers to think about the environmental impact of their purchases. With its Sustainable Living Plan, Unilever has encouraged others to integrate sustainable practices into brands and company operations.
Gen Z is the generation that has prioritised sustainability and ethical practices in their purchasing choices. The Bank of America has labelled Gen Z as the most disruptive generation ever. This is because Gen Z is the first generation to be ‘digital natives’. They were born into an online world and are now entering the workforce, compelling other generations to adapt to them rather than vice versa.
Bank of America also found that 44% of Gen Z are omnichannel shoppers, combining in-store and online shopping. They choose quality over price, and sustainability is an equally important issue.
In addition to sustainability and issues around a company’s environmental impact and social responsibility, Gen Z also strongly emphasises corporate ethics, including a brand’s principles and practices regarding its operations and treatment of employees. A recent example of a company that faced a backlash because of claims of bullying against employees is the Swedish Influencer clothing brand Djerf Avenue. The backlash on social media prompted an apology from Matilda Djerf.
Consumers are increasingly confident in expressing their displeasure at brands and companies that engage in unethical practices or fail to address social concerns, and the backlash can be swift and brutal, as Djerf Avenue discovered. The benefit of this is that businesses are increasingly aware their behaviours and actions are under constant scrutiny, so there must be greater congruency and transparency between their statements about what they do and their actions.
Personalisation will be a key marketing strategy in 2025. However, it is crucial to remember that personalisation goes beyond using data analytics to segment customers and clients and then using AI to deliver content and offers.
Personalisation is how we make customers feel valued and understood. While technology and AI can assist us in this process, more is required.
Alyssa Kopelman of Healthline Media speaks of intentionality. The philosophy emphasises a values-aligned audience-first approach. It is a philosophy where every action has a purpose, aligns with the audience's needs and can be connected to impact.
In the coming year, technology will continue to develop and grow, and the power of AI will continue to expand. People will continue to feel overwhelmed by the rapid rate of change. With all the changes that will occur, the power of personal connection will make the difference between those brands that customers trust and those whose message is lost because there has been no intention to create a values-aligned audience-first approach.
Personalisation is crucial because trust is a critical factor for customers, and personalisation is the key to building that trust.
