Imagine renting a holiday home and stepping into the kitchen. Everything feels out of place. You know how to cook, the fundamental skills haven't changed, but the environment around you is completely different.
Marketing in 2025 can sometimes feel equally unfamiliar. Consumer behaviours shift, technology evolves, and market trends appear and disappear at lightning speed.
So, what do you do in these situations? You adapt. You change your approach — finding the best pots, pans, and ingredients in the kitchen — and create a delicious meal. Or, in the case of marketing, you re-organise and optimise your approach in three key areas: measurement and insights; media and personalisation; and creative and content:
1. Measurements and insights
In today's data-rich environment, simply collecting information — with the right consent — isn't enough. "The quality of your data and how you apply it to create more meaningful and helpful marketing will determine how you're perceived as a brand, and whether you're appealing to buy from," says Kate Adams, Google’s Business Solutions and Insights Director. In an age of data abundance, a centralised and integrated approach is demanded.
This unified infrastructure creates a democratisation of data; allowing everyone in your organisation access to the insights.
Marketers have known for a long time they need to harness first-party data as a foundation to build better customer relationships. But now you need to consider other data sources too, for example metadata on images that show up in visual searches, so that your customers can find you where and how they are searching.
The collected data from all of those need to come together much earlier in organisations to be easily accessed by teams that can use it for a smarter audience strategy.
This unified infrastructure creates a democratisation of data; allowing everyone in your organisation access to the insights.
And the speed at which these insights are gleaned and acted upon has dramatically increased.
"We move from data being analysed once every few weeks or months, to insights about your consumers being up-to-date every day. It’s data 2.0," Adams explains.
This is helped in no small part by AI, which can process huge volumes of data and provide insights from tens of sources. This empowers sales teams, product development, and every other department to make decisions, accelerating the entire organisation.
Actionable takeaway: Invest in tools and technologies that centralise data and empower all employees, not just a data team, to access and analyse it. Then make the most of the speed of insights by leveraging identifying trends, or optimising campaigns.
2. Media and personalisation
Personalisation is no longer a buzzword — it's an expectation. And it's not just about coding a person’s name on an email anymore.
With AI allowing us to advertise to people whenever they're shopping, scrolling, streaming, and searching, we will see a rethinking of the traditional media plan.
Imagine ads that anticipate your needs, understand your context, and offer solutions that genuinely improve your life. Businesses will be able to tailor the media using the insights they hold about customers, as well as situational data — weather, geography, search trends, and so much more.
Take two unique customers. You could run a 30-second beautifully made campaign that will advertise dog treats being given in a local park in weather over 24 degrees when it reaches one customer. And it will not talk about dogs when it reaches the other, because they don’t have a dog, but might show them barbeque equipment at the same temperature.
This level of personalisation requires a deep understanding of your audience and the ability to craft messages that resonate emotionally.
Actionable takeaway: Explore how you can use data and insights to create more personalised and emotionally resonant experiences for your audience. Consider investing in technology, like Google’s Performance Max, that enables dynamic creative optimisation and personalised messaging across all channels.
3. Creative and content
Beautiful and effective creatives are expected in the age of AI. The shift we can see is moving from functional advertising to emotional advertising.
Functional advertising means personalised communication, such as using your customer’s name or understanding what they might be shopping for. Emotional advertising takes this a step further.
"The power of video is that you can build an emotional connection with someone," continues Adams. Whether it's partnering with creators for authentic storytelling or leveraging AI to generate personalised visuals, the focus is on creating content that resonates with individual viewers.
Take László Gaál, a YouTube Creator and digital artist who made a homage to Porsche with video generating model Veo 2. The emotive story, which includes a variety of locations, a large cast, and innovative camera shots, isn’t the attention-grabbing part. The entire video — including the majority of the behind-the-scenes interview — is AI-generated. Completely changing the game for creativity.
Actionable takeaway: Evaluate the quality of your current creative. Is it emotionally engaging? Does it reflect your brand values? Explore how AI tools like Demand Gen can help you create more compelling, emotive, and personalised content at scale.
By focusing on measurements and insights, media and personalisation, and creative and content, you can create a marketing environment that's both efficient and effective. It's not that we are unequipped to cook in an unfamiliar kitchen, we just need to rearrange the tools and ingredients you already have to create something truly remarkable.
