FIVE FOR 2025: TRENDSPOTTING IN THE MARKETPLACE

Data analytics and smart tech will give the marketer more power in the new year. How she uses those tools to claim the consumer's time will shape marketing campaigns

- HARISH BIJOOR

Every Tom, Dick and Harish puts out his trend sheet for 2025; I thought I might as well do it. Here is a list of marketing trends I see in the year ahead and in the years that will roll out thereafter. Do take it with a pinch of salt, if not a shovel of it.

The second currency is the first currency now: All of us as consumers carry two currencies that take us through life. The first has typically been money and the second, time. The second currency now overtakes money. While money can be topped up in our lives in myriad ways, we are yet to discover how to top up time. Consumers in 2025 will be that much more demanding when it comes to how their time is used by marketers. This has ramifications for media, entertainment, distribution systems, retail, ecommerce, quick commerce, customer service and a whole host of arenas.

Gone are the days when patient marketers expected their consumers to be patient as well. Marketers need to brush up their act on how they create time-saving products, services and systems for their consumers. Charge a fee for it if need be, but save time. Remember, we as consumers are not living. We are dying. One day at a time. How I die must be my choice, dear marketer, not yours.

The consumer becomes weak, not strong: As marketers of yore kept saying the consumer is king, a whole consumer-centric movement fell into place. Customer journeys, customer personas and tools of every kind kept being put together by marketers. These tools are there with us, but their use will lessen in the years ahead. The marketer is becoming that much more powerful today.