As we near the end of 2024, it’s crucial for marketers to stay ahead of emerging trends. Our experts shared their thoughts on some of the biggest marketing, PR, recruitment, creative and AI trends that marketers and advertising agencies alike will be navigating in 2025.
Qualtrics released their 2025 Consumer Trends report, and it’s clear that loyalty is weak, and one bad experience can unravel it all. 53% of consumers reported that they will cut their spend after one bad experience. Bad experiences can include bad communication, misinformation, bad customer service and a lack of convenience.
It’s so important for brands to actually do what they say. They have to live and deliver their brand promise. Too often, brands and organizations place too much focus on what they’re saying and forget about what they’re doing. Every experience is an opportunity to deliver on your brand promise. Every experience is an opportunity to create a moment that either surprises and delights your customer or leaves them frustrated. Look at every touchpoint and think about how you can create moments of elevation.
– Janee Wolf, Associate Director of Strategy
Listening to your customers is critical in understanding their needs and meeting them where they are. It’s how to stay relevant. But listening alone may no longer be enough. Qualtrics found that only 16% of consumers will use social media to air their grievances (down from 2021), and only 22% will write something on a third-party review site (also down from 2021). You have to observe their behaviors as well, and you need to draw correlations between what they’re saying and doing.
You have to adopt an always listening and observing mentality. And use those learnings to address experiences that need improving and make sure your messaging is meeting customers where they are.
– Janee Wolf, Associate Director of Strategy
Looking for PR success in 2025? Did you have to read that question twice? Be honest.
Attention spans are on the decline, social media is on the rise and untraditional news sources are paving the way for a PR revolution with short-form content. Readers want to cut the noise and find exactly what they want in record time. To break through, consider adding popular newsletters to your media relations strategy, prioritizing influencers with content that speaks directly to who you’re talking to and looking for ways for your brand to stay involved with social media conversations and trends. This will help you execute tactics and messaging with more urgency than the traditional news story might provide.
TL:DR? Consider short-form content in your 2025 PR strategy.
– Sam Dillie, Public Relations Specialist
Have you ever wanted to be able to predict the future and find news trends before they happen? Online tools can help. Monitor sites to find where trends in your industry happen before they make it to online news sites—do they start on Reddit, and then move to TikTok? Can you monitor keywords on Google Trends before they appear in the news, and if so, what’s the lead time? Is there a social listening service you can implement to monitor keywords from competitor brands, so yours can lead? A strong tech stack and processes in 2025 can be a crystal ball into the PR wins you want.
– Sam Dillie, Public Relations Specialist
Video will dominate marketing in 2025, with 86% of businesses already using video and more planning to expand their budgets according to Wyzowl. By 2025, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be video-based (Cisco), making it critical for brand visibility and engagement. Notably, viewers retain 95% of a message when delivered via video (Forbes), far surpassing other formats. With 90% of social media video consumption on mobile (eMarketer), optimizing content for mobile devices is no longer optional.
The focus is clear: quality, mobile-friendly video content will drive results in the year ahead.
– Cassie Kopcha, Assistant Project Manager
AI is changing the game at work, making things more efficient and opening up cool new ways for employees to grow. Companies are putting in more and more effort to train their teams to work alongside AI, showing just how important it is to get humans and technology working together. But let’s be real—AI tools come and go—all. the. time. One day, there’s a hot new platform, and the next, it’s old news. So it’s important to keep trying out new options and not get too frustrated along the way. Staying flexible and open to learning is how you’ll keep ahead and ready for whatever’s next. And don’t forget—share your AI challenges and wins with your coworkers and with Core. When we learn from each other, we all level up together!
Hot tip: you can use AI to help you learn AI – it can even help you write a prompt to get the result you want back out of it.
– Laura Borden, VP of Resourcing
Looking ahead to 2025, we’re seeing design teams get more sophisticated with automation, allowing their creatives to focus on what they do best, create.
Some of the best innovations we're seeing right now are custom scripts designed to remove some of the technical tasks found throughout normal design workflow. Tasks like adding drop shadows, fixing trademark symbols and preparing files for print are all essential to a successful project but ultimately bog designers down and steal time from creative thinking and execution. These automations are adding value to customers by improving the consistency and accuracy of output while swapping the time spent on tedious tasks with creative development, strategy and problem solving. Adding another layer of value, when these automations are developed with measurement and management in mind, they provide business insight into the value of use and the ability to guarantee full adoption across large teams.
Marketers leveraging the best tech to equip staff with the newest tools to do their best work are positioned to provide the highest value to their clients and are primed to thrive in 2025.
– Donovan Green, Senior Designer and Technology Integrator
As AI tools become more integrated into design and production workflows, their use brings a growing demand for servers and energy, increasing the need for sustainable practices. Here are actionable insights on how AI can support eco-friendly innovation:
- Angela Fioretti, Senior Digital Art Director
AR has been around for a while, but 2024 represented some pretty big advancements. Between the release of the Apple Vision Pro and the unveiling of the Meta Orion project, it’s clear that tech giants view spatial computing as the next frontier of smart devices. As AI capabilities continue to progress rapidly, spatial computing is poised to advance at exponential rates in 2025 and beyond. If you’re not convinced, consider the following: The market for AR and VR headsets is predicted to be $16.9 billion in 2025, up from $12.46 billion in 2024. And it is projected to surpass around $261 billion by 2034 (Precedence Research).
– Nick Krueger, VP Creative Services
In today’s cultural landscape, employee well-being is increasingly central to workplace conversations, as organizations prioritize holistic and flexible benefits that cater to diverse needs. The corporate wellness market, which was valued at $61 billion back in 2023 and is projected to grow to $85 billion by 2030 (Wellable), underscores the demand for wellness-focused workplaces. Going into 2025, recruitment marketers should make sure to emphasize their company’s commitment to mental health support, flexible work models and comprehensive wellness programs that reflect a deeper understanding of individual employee needs. Emphasizing work-life balance through hybrid or remote work options can resonate with candidates seeking flexibility and autonomy.
Addressing these priorities, along with showcasing strong work-life balance initiatives, will position your business as a forward-thinking and employee-centered organization. Authentically communicating these values will help you attract and retain a strong talent pool in 2025 and beyond.
– Laura Borden, VP of Resourcing
