Mission Critical: 5 Essential Marketing Predictions for 2025

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Mission Critical: 5 Essential Marketing Predictions for 2025

Change is the rule, not the exception, in all things marketing and media, especially over the last five years. That relentless pace and endless parade of shifts and trends can make it very hard to separate the mission critical from the merely curious.

But we’ve got your back. Or, more accurately, your future.

You’re invited to join leaders from across the marketing ecosystem to dive deep into what really matters in 2025. They’ll reveal their biggest predictions so you can capitalize on opportunities, solve the toughest challenges, and emerge triumphant once the final bell tolls on Q4 next year.

Our speakers will be using proprietary data and insights from Wpromote’s Polaris platform to explore critical changes across:

  • Consumer behavior and the changing customer journey
  • Media platforms and capabilities
  • Marketing measurement and media accountability

Speakers

Challenger Takeaways

  1. You have to think carefully about how you message and interact with people. Be mindful of how and where you’re showing up AND what your target audience is doing in the channel that you’re saying “hello” in.

  2. The big challenge for 2025? Finding the right mix of brand-building and performance marketing so you can be a meaningful part of the conversation.

  3. For social commerce, you need to focus on building stronger connections with your audience through personalized strategies. Think brand ambassadors, tailored messaging, and creating that personal touch customers crave.

  4. Shoppable video content is a big opportunity right now. You have to make it easy for people to go from watching to buying in just a few clicks regardless of the platform you’re doing business on.

  5. Consumers have more options than ever in all aspects of the shopping journey and the way they discover new products is changing fast. Social media is the new word-of-mouth, so brands need to get creative to stand out in this fragmented landscape.

  6. The only way to break down the barriers between brand and performance marketing is to take control of your data. Sprinkle in some storytelling with your performance marketing. Make sure your brand marketing has foundations in data-based decisions.

  7. People aren’t paying attention to what AI is best at. If you’re not including human oversight, you’re doing yourself a disservice. AI can be a game changer, but only if you use it wisely.

  8. TikTok’s uncertain future is a reminder that platform diversification is critical. You never want to rely too heavily on one channel.

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT


Jenna Wigman:

Hello everybody and welcome to our virtual event, Mission Critical: 5 Essential Marketing Predictions for 2025. I am Jenna Wigman, director of communications here at wpromote, and I’m really excited to moderate today’s conversation with an amazing all women panel of marketing experts. We’re here to dive into the trends that we’re going to see in the coming months that are going to have the biggest impact on marketing and media in 2025. 

 

I’m going to put up a quick poll just to get an idea of what key trends everybody in the audience is most excited about. So go ahead and get your answers in while I go over some brief housekeeping notes. Alright, just some logistical details so that everybody can get the most out of this incredible event. If the slides on your screen feel too small, you can resize them and move things around.

 

Feel free to make the interface your own so that you can get the most out of the event. The group chat, you should see down on your bottom right of your screen, that’s where you’re going to see Grayson and Hillary from our team saying Hello. Keep that window open. That’s where you’re going to be able to participate and share your perspectives as we’re going through our conversation. 

 

Also, that’s where Grayson’s going to be dropping in some prediction takeaways throughout our event. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll also see some icons including a resource center where you’ll find some additional content from our experts and more importantly, that’s where you’re going to find a q and a. That’s where you can ask questions throughout the event that we’re going to get to at the end of our conversation so you can dig a little deeper into some of the topics with our experts as we go along.

 

Let’s take a look at what is top of mind. And no surprise here, everybody is thinking about ai. It seems like if AI is not a part of the conversation, then you feel real behind. So thanks everybody for participating. Keep the group chat open the whole time so that you guys can get the full value of the event and make sure you get a chance to win. Alright, without further ado, let’s meet our panel. 

 

We’re going to kick things off with a little brief introduction and an icebreaker. We’re going to get to know our panelists with some rapid fire, this and that questions just get a sense of where their heads are at for 2025 trends. And if you’re in the audience, we’d also love for you guys to participate in the group chat. So go ahead and drop your answers to the rapid fire questions there. Alright, Jann, let’s start with you. Can I get a quick intro for the audience?

 

Jann Parish:

Well, hi, thank you for having me. I’m Jann Parrish. I am the consulting chief marketing officer for Tommy John underwear.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Amazing. And now for your quick take, AI or AR?

 

Jann Parish:

Absolutely AI

 

Jenna Wigman:

Of course. Along with sounds like our entire audience. Claire, can we get a quick intro from you?

 

Claire Perez:

Sure. Hello everyone. My name’s Claire Perez. I’m the VP of performance at Thrive Causemetics and Bigger Than Beauty Skincare.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Thanks. Thanks so much for being here. And how about you? AI or AR?

 

Claire Perez:

AI as well.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Amazing. And Christine, let’s get a quick intro from you.

 

Christine Schrader:

Hey, I am Christine Schrader. I am the VP of Strategic Innovation here at Wpromote. And for this or that, I feel compelled to say AR just to be annoying and contrary, but I probably got to give it to AI on this one, it is a little overwhelming there.

 

Jenna Wigman:

It feels like we’ve got a really clean consensus on this one and we will definitely be diving 

deeper into AI later in this conversation. Alright, a couple of quick rapid fires just to get our energy up, upper funnel or lower funnel. Let’s start with you Claire.

 

Claire Perez:

Lower funnel.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Christine, how about you?

 

Christine Schrader:

I’ve got to give it to the upper funnel.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Alright, and how about you Jann

 

Jann Parish:

With Christine, I’ve got to go upper funnel.

Jenna Wigman:

We’re going to definitely dive into that divide in a little bit. And one last one, full funnel. Full funnel. Yeah, we’ve also of course got full funnel in the room. One last one. And I’d love for you guys to answer this all together in store or online?

 

Claire Perez:

Online.

 

Christine Schrader:

Online.

 

Jann Parish:

I’ll go contrary and say I think a little bit of both, but maybe some in-store.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Don’t forget to keep the group chat open and keep asking your questions. In the q and a, we’re going to be sending a recording of the event that we’ll send through next week that you can share with your teams and watch back in case you have missed any of the insights as we went through the conversation today. 

 

Alright, so we got an idea from our audience about what is top of mind for their teams as we start 2025, but I’d love to hear from you guys where you think marketing is going to steer us in the next 12 months. As you can see from our five predictions, we’re going to hit on some of the biggest topics that are taking up the industry conversation right now. But Jann, I’d love to hear from you as we start out if you think that there are any topics that have been a bit over hyped for 2025.

 

Jann Parish:

It’s such a good question and as much as I want to say that AI being an important part of the conversation is not the only part of the conversation and I feel like we’re spending a lot of time on what is probably just a facet as to how we put together a complete marketing mix

 

Jenna Wigman:

Claire, on the other side of that, are there any topics or trends that you think have been a bit overlooked as part of the main conversation in the industry?

 

Claire Perez:

I think the evolution of search and how search behavior is changing and how in the world of really high CPMs and growing CPMs, there’s a lot that can be done on the earned and own side. TikTok search, SEO, Amazon, SEO, YouTube, SEO, all of those kinds of things should help future-proof you against CPM fluctuation and also show the authority in payoff for a great foundation so that you’re less beholden to the whims of paid media changes.

 

Jenna Wigman:

The shifting landscape of search is something that is a massive impact on our industry. Now, Christine, outside of that, what additional marketing trend do you think is going to have the biggest impact on consumers this year?

 

Christine Schrader:

I think it’d be hard to not say that whatever’s going on with TikTok and in the social landscape more generally is going to have the biggest impact on consumers. If a TikTok pan happens, we could find out during this call that that happens or whether or not it’s going to happen, that will shift the whole ecosystem in some ways because there’s just a huge amount of time being spent on TikTok by consumers right now and there is overlap. 

 

It’s something like, I think eMarketer said 74% of TikTok users are on Instagram and they’re spending 60% of their time on videos there, but we know that they’re interacting in different ways even with the same videos on the meta platforms versus something like TikTok. So I think that will be on the consumer side, the biggest impact full stop. 

 

Now if that doesn’t happen, I still think there’s a lot of shifts in social behavior like search, et cetera that are going to rise to the top and TikTok’s in the middle of a lot of that social commerce, it’s in the middle of the search conversation. So I think that it’s hard to escape TikTok being right in the middle of how consumers are going to be impacted by marketing and media this year.

 

Jenna Wigman:

I think if the first two weeks of Jannuary are any indication, there’s certainly going to be a lot of action and activity in the shifting social landscape in the 11 months to follow. Alright, I’ve got another poll for our audience. So if you guys can weigh in on what you’re looking at in terms of net new strategies and technologies for 2025, we’d love to know if you guys are looking to really reinvent what you’re doing this year if you’re looking to double down on what you’ve done from years before and just get a sense of what it is that you guys are most excited about. Yep. No surprise here. 

 

It looks like everybody is trying something new. We know from both sides, from the agency side and from the brand side that really looking at new ways to reach audiences, especially in a volatile landscape, that’s really important. Okay. I know we talked a little bit upper funnel, lower funnel, full-funnel, so I know that there’s a little bit of an opportunity to have a brand versus performance marketing debate amongst our panelists today. But let’s start specifically on the brand marketing side. 

 

Our first prediction is from work and it foresees that brand marketing will shift towards brand ambassadors and more personalized awareness tactics. Claire, your background is primarily in performance. From that perspective, how do you view the importance of brand in an overall marketing strategy?

 

Claire Perez:

Although most of my career has been in DR performance marketing, you still have to think very carefully about the way you message and the way you interact with people. Someone very smart recently told me that branding is how you say hello and that’s actually relevant at any stage of the funnel, whether you’re saying hello for the first time or if you are greeting an old friend. 

 

So just being very mindful of how and where you are showing up and what the target customer is doing in the channel that you are saying hello in. Are they there for entertainment? Are they there for research? Are they there for inspiration? And that will all change how we say hello and then also what KPIs we bring through to understand the position in the funnel.

 

Jenna Wigman:

People can’t buy your products if they don’t know who you are. That’s a really important piece of the puzzle. Jann, from your perspective, how do you think that brand strategies will evolve in today’s commerce landscape?

 

Jann Parish:

I think there are a couple of things to consider there. There is a piece of the consumer who’s like, I want the thing that everybody else wants. And I’d say that’s true kind of traditional product marketing in a way that’s like, why buy this thing? I think TikTok is probably the best place in the world. 

 

As a personal reference, this Pilates machine on TikTok has been following me around for weeks now and there’s that side of it and then there’s the brand piece of it. And I think as a marketer it’s knowing where your allegiance is and how you’re going to do both. That can be really challenging. And so as I look at Tommy John as an example, there’s a component of brand health and long-term legacy that’s really important obviously because we’re looking to build something that can be a billion-dollar business one day.

 

When you look at these individual product marketing things, which I think is how you kind of create content these days, it’s like what video can I make to get the person to buy this thing? And the correlation between the two is proving to be, I think trickier than we realize. And so the way I typically look at it is can you start with a theme overall of what are you here and why are you here and are you part of that conversation and build from there. So there’s a reason for being much like what Claire’s saying with the idea of hello.

 

Jenna Wigman:

And Christine, you alluded to it earlier by bringing in full funnel to the conversation, but Wpromote has championed brand performance, but between brand and performance, where’s the balance? How do you see the dance between those two priorities shifting in 2025?

 

Christine Schrader:

I want to break down that question a little bit because there’s this idea of balance that indicates that performance and brand are two totally different things and you’re sort of just always weighing your budgets and your tactics and how much money is going toward this and et cetera, which is inevitable, right? It’s going to happen, but it really is more the second piece, right? The dance, right? It is how these two things are working together. We are big believers in this idea that brand marketing needs to be held accountable.

 

It’s not this Mad Men thing where it’s just like I have an idea and I force it on the consumer. And if we like it, if the company likes it, that’s good enough. And on the performance side, and this is something I think I know Claire at Thrive does extremely well, is bringing this storytelling component.

 

I think that brings in sort of what Jann was saying to understanding thematically how people are moving through this journey, which is not a funnel, it’s not cramming people down a funnel right now we’ve compared it a couple times to the game of shoots and ladders. Suddenly somebody sees something on TikTok because of social commerce, they might proceed directly from a brand thing to buying something from a brand activation to buying something. 

 

And on the flip side, somebody can be really deep in the process and be moved out and fall back down to the beginning because they read a comment on Reddit saying your product is bad. They go back to exploring and trying to research and find out more stuff. And so that’s where this dynamic way of operating I think means that we have to get better and we have to build processes that bring brand initiatives into market faster so we can actually see how they’re working in real time and evolving.

 

It isn’t like we spent six months working on idea, push it out into market and now we wait and hope and aren’t sure for all of these different things. There are the brand initiatives that will take longer and we have to build that into our models. But there are lots of things with the rise of social, et cetera that are quicker that we can start to get our understanding of the signals of whether something’s working and bringing people farther along that journey and effectively positioning the brand long-term. 

 

And it really is about changing that way of thinking, bringing in more data into the brand. So you understand that not so it restricts storytelling, but you essentially have a bonus where you’re able to guess what audiences are going to be saying and push those things out into market. It’s really about a reframing to understand it as a dance versus two distinct totally delineated things that are happening where the right hand doesn’t necessarily know what the left hand is doing, but you’re just trying to find a balance between them so you don’t get in trouble in either direction.

 

Jenna Wigman:

It sounds like upper funnel and lower funnel is the wrong question altogether. We should throw out the funnel in favor of a much more fluid customer journey. We’re going to dive more into that too before we pivot into the evolving shopping experience.

 

Diving into that evolving shopping experience. So once you say hello and your audience knows who you are, it’s time to look at how they’re actually making their purchasing decisions and without so many different platforms offering various seamless commerce experiences like the team discussed, the consumer journey is changing every day and social commerce is really gaining a ton of ground. Jann, talk to me about how this is impacting your strategy.

 

Jann Parish:

I think there’s a lot going on in this space for us as the brand overall. One of the things that we’ve had a continued success with has been how we’ve used influencers to promote key products for the brand. This works really well with the women’s business in particular. I think what we haven’t been able to unlock, which is interesting, we are largely a men’s underwear brand is how to do this for the male segment and there are some gender differences as to how they want to media and where we show up that we’re working through right now. And I think that is kind of the key unlock for social commerce overall. Women as far as having somebody who can communicate why buy this thing? Why do I want this thing make you believe in it because it works so well for them where men, it’s like can you show me the utility of what this is and why I would be interested in it?

 

If I were to look at how we created content at the beginning of my career a long, long time ago, it was like a couple of beautiful images. We kind of top down the whole approach and then you get to today and there’s some beautiful images for sure it’s important, but there’s also a lot of content that’s iterated as you go through those. Kind of speaking to the point that Christine was making, there is a component of what’s working and diving a little bit deeper into that to understand how you can get that customer across the threshold.

 

Jenna Wigman:

I mean it’s really important to understand your audience and there’s no one size fits all approach when it comes to building your strategy. Claire, how is your team approaching shoppable video content in 2025 and are there any specific platforms that you guys are especially excited about for your particular audience?

 

Claire Perez:

We’re heavily focused on this to understand not only how it’s working for us now in terms of meta shops and TikTok shops, but also what different platforms are developing, what their roadmaps are. We work incredibly closely with all of the partners, so the metas, Pinterest, YouTube, all have social commerce offerings now being integrated, often integrated with an affiliate structure as well or influencer piece and that’s great for us, but also understanding what’s that doing for the consumer and what am I capitalizing on there. 

 

So for example, Meta Shops has done really well for us for new customer acquisition, it’s that impulse buy, but the AOV is lower because they’re seeing the hype about our liquid lash extensions mascara. They’re like brilliant, I have to try this. They buy a mascara that’s typically a lower AOV for a single purchase, but it’s that quick hit within the Meta experience still. But because of the levers we’ve seen with some of the social commerce platforms already, we are talking constantly to some of the other partners about their roadmaps, what they’re developing, how we can be one of the first players there because it should be a different experience based on the activities that are taking place on that platform, for example.

 

Jenna Wigman:

So it’s not only about having a custom strategy for your audience, but it’s got to be tailored to each specific platform to really be able to perform. For sure. Yeah. And then looking at the growth of social commerce Statista forecast that social commerce revenues are going to surpass 1 trillion US dollars by 2028, which is a massive amount. Christine, there’s so many more options to purchase now. And to Claire’s point, it’s evolving constantly. There are new products being offered, every platform’s trying to get ahead of what their competitors are doing. How do you think that social commerce is fitting into that broader and very much changing a customer journey?

 

Christine Schrader:

I’d love to throw back and say a year ago people were like, we don’t think social commerce will ever work in the us. Maybe that’s just something elsewhere that works. So we can really see the dynamism of the way media and marketing driven by changing consumer behavior really are impacting every day the way we need to adjust these strategies. 

 

And I feel like social commerce is a perfect example of some of this because first of all, it’s not fully different. Again, we got to push back on this tendency to being like social commerce is completely its own thing. There are distinctive things about it that you want to bring into your strategy, et cetera. But when we were talking about that link between brand and performance, this is like ground zero for understanding a lot of the stuff that both Jann and Claire were talking about when Claire talks about the impulse spies.

 

I mean, I was reading an article in, I think it was New York magazine this morning and somebody was like, yeah, I bought that off of Instagram when I was lying in bed. Gross. For me, there’s this idea of that impulse buy that guilty little pleasure that should I be slightly embarrassed that I bought this over social, et cetera. That can still creep into what we’re talking about. The real fix there is understanding how this links into the rest of the journey and how it works with both discovery points, many of which are on social and the rest of commerce. So we recommend this idea of total commerce where the kind of classic impulse is to be like everything we want, everything DTC, we want to sell directly, et cetera. But the moves Amazon has made and the way people are behaving and that’s the biggest thing.

 

Where are they buying? How are they buying and understanding the different behaviors on those platforms and really looking to build strategies that optimize across that full journey all the way from inspiration and discovery down to purchase to repeat purchase, to digging into driving that higher AOV and understanding where these different commerce experiences actually fit. So when you’re looking at that big picture, you get a better idea of how your business as a whole can take advantage of these platforms. Again, it’s not just looking at investment in a silo which can end up pitting channels against each other. They’re fighting for budget, they’re fighting for attention and recognition and everybody wants to attribute everything to their channel. But really looking at this, and this is a really seismic shift that in many ways for many brands is still theoretical. It’s something we’re all like, yes, it should be like that, but that’s not necessarily how a lot of the data is organized, how we’re looking at different audience insights across different platforms.

 

One of the things I think will be really interesting with AI is bringing in some of those components to allow for more customization. So we are doing the right thing and making things for specific platforms and making sure it fits specific audiences without getting into this internally cannibalistic mentality. How can we really use our people to keep that large 30,000 feet view of how all of these things are working together and the agility to move budget or evolve or adapt creative in response to changes while still proactively delivering on what’s working in specific environments. 

 

And that to me is like the future that we’re working toward, that we’re building tech toward, that we’re building strategies and processes and frameworks and all the tools in a marketer’s chest. That’s where we need to be going. And literally, I think social commerce can be ground zero for some of that because of the way it brings in a lot of different things into that new functionality

 

Jann Parish:

I have to say. I want to add something to that. I think that what’s interesting about social commerce too is I think a lot of it is just still entertainment. So there’s a discovery component that comes with seeing it on your phone, TikTok, or just an experience you may have with YouTube, whatever it might be. And it’s really ultimately where your distribution channels play and then how you’re going to create content for that as well. So as an example, you may see something really great that you love from a TikTok video, but you end up buying it when you’re making a return from Amazon at your Kohl’s store. 

 

Those are the kinds of things I think as we look at products specifically in retail and fashion overall is that is the important piece is how you’re going to create that overall top line entertainment value to also support where your customer is going to shop. Because as much as DTC is super important, and as a DTC brand legacy brand, that’s important that we believe very much in that there is something to be said for the diversification of your channels and they may not buy on TikTok, but you have to show up there. They might want to.

Claire Perez:

One thing I wanted to add to that actually was it’s also thinking beyond the revenue. As you were kind of saying Jann, the sales specifically might not be something that you get from say a TikTok shop. Maybe the AOV is much higher and you’re more thinking about the awareness side. It’s still helpful to have your products on TikTok shops Absolutely because of some the other elements of that platform, there’s an affiliate component which we’ve leveraged quite extensively to send out to creators who have requested product. 

 

They make a video now and we’ll pay commission if they sell through that video. But even if they don’t, basically for the cost of a product and the shipping to send it to them, you’ve got a whole bunch of views In a world where I said the CPMs are really high just without thinking about affiliate revenue or TikTok shops revenue. In a short while after launching our TikTok shops, we had 2 million basically free views that had an impact on our DTC campaigns on TikTok where we were actually sending back to our website even if the revenue from TikTok shop wasn’t as high. So there’s an extraneous value to a lot of these commerce platforms now that isn’t purely a sales channel. Exactly as Christine was saying, it’s a branding play, it’s an awareness play. Even if they’re still affiliate, try get ready with me videos.

 

Jann Parish:

I totally agree with you. I think what’s interesting too is you think about how you’re building authenticity to the customer and these videos do exactly that. It’s the grassroots, if you will, element of how the content comes together. I have to say, I think one of the most important pieces of our media mix today is your affiliate strategy.

 

Getting those to speak on behalf of your brand builds its overall brand authority, but also gives you a sense of authenticity that can’t be overlooked. And there’s also the aspect of written word and the importance of SEO that comes from that content as well. It’s interesting to watch all these pieces start to kind of mold together and to create the strategy when we were thinking about them so separately for so long.

 

Christine Schrader:

Well, and I love what you said about voices, and I know we got to move to the next one. I see Jenna looking at me because I’m talking to me, but I do think that’s key. It was sort of in that first brand one where it was like brand awareness, brand is moving toward these kinds of things, influencers, creators, et cetera.

 

 It’s a pendulum, right? There’s authenticity plays, there’s the polished brand assets that are like you’re in more control of your story and really finding the balance there and you love to see it coming into commerce also and understanding that sometimes other people can speak for your brand much better in a more authoritative way than the brand can advocate for itself and really thinking about that and sometimes clarity, use your thing like that. If that “hello” is Jann recommending me that actually might be more than me just running up to you and saying hello out of nowhere. 

 

So really understanding, not to stretch this metaphor to the breaking point, but I do think really understanding how those things come together and that customer decision builds is really critical and it takes that holistic viewpoint. And now we can move to the next one. Sorry, Jenna.

 

Jenna Wigman:

No, I love hearing everybody’s insights. Well, it sounds like we’re still kind of on talking about that balance and that dance between brand and performance. And as the evolving customer journey continues to shift, it sounds like brands really have to prioritize being where consumers are, which is constantly changing. 

So Christine, it was interesting that you referenced how social commerce was not exactly something that people thought had a lot of potential coming into 2024 and retail media is something that has been getting a lot of buzz and traction last year and something that we’re hearing a lot of predictions for this coming year, but we’re not sure if that’s something that has a lot of hype around it. Jann, do you view retail media as a viable area of growth for Tommy John in 2025?

 

Jann Parish:

Absolutely. I think there’s an element of discovery that comes with it that’s really important. There’s also an aspect of depending on where the retail media network is, the partnership with that particular retailer is really key. I think there’s room for it for sure. I think if they’re ready in a place to go shopping where all these retail media networks are, you’re more likely to pull them through. And that’s really what we’re trying to do.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Claire, how do you approach allocating your media spend when there’s so many emerging opportunities on the table and kind of like we’ve touched upon, you want to be showing up where people are. How do you find that right mix?

 

Claire Perez:

It’s a balance between understanding the consumer side and then the business metrics side. So on the consumer side, they have more options than ever even for a single DTC brand, right? There are social commerce platforms, Amazon, things like that, that they can purchase from. So for them often then that will default to convenience and understanding their drivers and their motivators. On the business side, it is for each of your sales channels, understanding the different metrics. 

 

You can’t have the same ROAS goal or you won’t have the same LTV for each channel. Ideally you have omnichannel customers and that gets more complex, but it will be really important to factor in, okay, what are the margins you get on each sales channel? What’s the conversion rate? So whereas say Amazon will take definitely a higher cut than meta shops, that doesn’t take any, the conversion rate will be very different.

 

Maybe the AOV is different, those kinds of things. So we can back into what our new customer acquisition costs could be, the LTV could be, or the ROAS that we need to hit on that. Whilst also thinking, keeping in mind that they have all of these options, you do need to meet them where they are and you aren’t going to change consumer behavior just because you want them to come and shop DTC rate or come to the.com. But at the same time, how are you incentivizing.com? How does your loyalty program work across these different places? What’s the compelling reason? What’s unique? What’s exclusive about coming to your own website and how does that balance by different customer cohort? For sure, new customers are likely to go for the strongest convenient option.

 

 There’s going to be Amazon usually if you are on Amazon, whereas your more loyal customers maybe are really excited about some of the early access drops or some of the loyalty points that you’re able to earn on site. So understanding your cohorts, building a model around that with the different business KPIs that are relevant to that sales channel and that cohort. And then using that to allocate media budget to maximize the overall long-term value of those customer cohorts.

 

Jann Parish:

I have to say also that I think if you want to look at a really good example of somebody who’s done that well is Dior makeup. If you’ve had an opportunity to pay any attention to it, it’s been really pretty phenomenal. The loyalty program they have specifically on the Dior website, the benefits that you get as being part of it. So maybe you’ll pick up the lipstick you want or whatever at Sephora, but you’re going to get something extra special when you’re on the Dior website. And I think it’s that kind of crossover that’s been really interesting and stuff that we’re looking at as we land a similar platform for Tommy John especially as our distribution continues to grow.

 

Jenna Wigman:

I mean it sounds like new channels are essential, but really coming up with creative ways to reach different customer cohorts for existing channels is really important too, especially as we have different places where people are actually making their purchases along the consumer journey. Okay, Christine, let’s dive a little bit back into that brand vs. performance. I would love to know how you think the evolving customer journey is reshaping the way that brands approach their strategy from a full funnel point of view.

 

Christine Schrader:

Well, I think that’s what we’ve been talking about. I really actually love hearing both sides of this. I want to double click on what this convenience idea that frequently that first purchase might be convenient. It might be that impulse purchase on TikTok shop, it might be on Amazon, it might be you’re walking through Kohl’s and you see their little Sephora inside and pick it up. And that is the root of what I’m talking about.

 

Total commerce understanding, whether it’s through you a retail in store, all these different places they can find your product. You want to understand what role each of them are playing, what of audiences are shopping there and what that means. But Lathan in the attendee chat brought up something interesting, which was like he said, TikTok shop is the new late night TV infomercial that impulse buy, but it can lead to a long-term connection with a brand.

 

If the customer is satisfied, what happens after they buy from you on Amazon? How are you kind of collecting on that goodwill generated, assuming you’re like Jann and Claire and have excellent products in the market, how do you take advantage of that satisfaction? And I think that that idea, and you brought up Dior, I think of La Mer, they give you these beautiful gifts every time you buy something, et cetera. Luxury brands are always very front of the line for loyalty programs a lot of the time, but it’s not exclusive to them. And there are different things, understanding in a two-way conversation with your customers, what will incentivize them, what will make this worth it? What will make them come again and again and outweigh? Well, I am right next to the Sephora. I could pick up that right here, or I could buy it over there if that’s a key part of it.

 

But when it comes to the sort of brand and performance piece, I do think I kind of brought this up at the beginning, but that idea of getting things into market to start testing them on the brand side and really understanding how different messaging, how different themes are actually working instead of keeping it in the hypothetical inside the brand or with your agency partner, letting it cook and cook and cook and cook, and then finally getting it out there and maybe not seeing what you’re looking for, not seeing the return that you’re looking for. 

 

And then I think the risk on the performance side, which is well known, is the kind of starvation feast or famine cycle where you’re just hitting the same audiences over and over again and you’re soaked and you’re it against risk because you’ve really actually replaced ideas of profitability with efficiency or that ROAS is the only thing that matters. And smart performance marketers like Claire don’t take that. Just smart brand marketers like Jann aren’t going to be just looking at like, well, we have to have this millions of dollars brand initiative, and that’s really all we’re doing and hopefully we’re not going to really measure it. It looks cool though, so that’s great. These are the sort of paper tigers of marketing that I feel like come up and when we’re talking about performance, understanding that new audience’s performance isn’t just that channel, it’s not just today. 

 

It’s understanding the business outcomes you’re driving toward and making sure that yes, you should still be looking at efficiency in those things. Yes, you still want to be looking at those things, but as Claire said, laddering back up into your margins, into your profitability and understanding where that comes from.

 

And that in turn, one of the things we look at our tech platform, Polaris, and we’re looking at the audience, is a heat map where it’s like, okay, we see this part lighting up, putting things into market in real-time, and does that give us an idea for a certain brand initiative that is really targeted toward that audience that might go further than a much more expensive thing that’s much broader, et cetera. And just getting smarter and smarter. And that means you have to have control of your data. You have to understand what you’re looking at and translate it or with a partner or with tech partners, agency partners, et cetera. 

 

Translating your data not just into insights but into intelligence that continues to inform your strategy. That’s the only way to break down the barriers between brand and performance is to bring some of that magic into both areas. The storytelling into performance, the data into brand. That’s the machine that will get us to where we’re going.

 

Jenna Wigman:

I mean it sounds like agility in every aspect of your strategy is absolutely essential to be able to keep up with the pace of the industry today. Alright, we’re going to move into the AI section of our conversation. We knew you wanted it and now it is here. So we’ve got a quick pull up to get a sense of how important exploring and implementing AI is for our audience. We know that it’s a topic that you guys are interested in, but we’d love to get a sense of if this is something that you guys are actively exploring in your businesses. 

 

We see that this is something that’s extremely important for folks. It’s something that is really top of mind. Alright, diving into what everyone is here for in 2025, ai. So e-marketer predicts that generative AI, like your chatGPTs and Geminis combined with predictive AI is going to be a real engine to drive business growth despite the massive potential that there is. There’s still a lot of fear in the industry that AI could replace jobs. Christine, how do you think that AI is going to impact talent and resources in the marketing industry?

 

Christine Schrader:

I think we’ve said this for a long time. I think a lot of people are saying it now. AI is probably not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to use AI certainly could that being the real danger is people that are really maximizing the use of AI agents and different tools to make things work better, to scale, to do all kinds of things, to remove some of the mundane tasks from your plate, et cetera. But where I think we see people go a little astray I think is when they’re not paying attention to what AI is best at. So I will tell you as a writer, I always know when somebody has used say I had to generate something they could be using, whether it’s Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini, et cetera, it’s just you can hear it.

 

There are certain things it does in terms of phrasing that is right there. And I’ve seen that with skins of it’s a brand voice, et cetera, layered on top of it. And so if you’re using that exclusively and not the human oversight, not really articulating the inputs and playing with that, et cetera, you’re probably doing yourself a disservice. On the other hand, we’ve got so much data that ideally we would be able to be hooking together to understand that through line three different things as we’ve talked about multiple times a day. 

 

Those are things AI is already really great at, obviously still with human oversight, but that is when it comes to talent and resources, we’re an agency, how can we make sure the very best people are on your account that have the right experience, that have the right things in hand based on what you’re looking for?

 

That’s already something we’re piloting AI use for with human oversight because everything in AI is a pilot program right now. We’re also looking at how to combine different things within our proprietary tech. So we’re being able to bring those insights together into a form of intelligence. All of that I think is the forefront of where AI will have the most impact. So when you’re looking at talent and when you’re looking at how we resource different pieces of the marketing and media puzzle, AI should be factored in there, understanding how and when we’re going to use it effectively to be able to do more, to be able to be smarter and do faster and all of those kinds of things. 

On the talent side, I want people coming in that are ready to test these kinds of things to really explore what they’re capable of, et cetera, and are coming in either completely anti AI or sort of giving me the impression.

 

I’ve been hiring for roles lately where it’s like, yeah, you could just do anything with ai. I’m like, I think that there have to be guardrails on it that the technology isn’t there yet. So I’m looking for that happy medium of a true innovator that’s looking to learn, test and do, and that to me and then evangelize what’s working. So it’s not just you that gets the benefit of it. 

 

I think that’s really critical and some of that information sharing is something that everybody on this call can see on LinkedIn, et cetera. Where are people talking about this? Where can you start gleaning some of those insights and training yourself to really be in the hot seat here? And we’ve seen a lot of companies announce like millions of dollars in AI training and stuff. That’s great. That’s all well and good, but it really is about integrating into a workflow and a lot of AI trainings are talking about it in a silo. It really is about understanding the folks with their hands on the actual tasks on the keyboard in the meetings to understand how AI can make the best possible impact act.

 

Jenna Wigman:

I think that there’s a lot of conceptual debate out there about AI and ethical questions, but from a practical standpoint, Jann is implementing these kinds of AI technologies, something that’s front of mind for you and your business.

 

Jann Parish:

To what Christine was saying, the first piece is AI is not here to create brand tone and manner. You need people to create brand tone and manner, no question about it. What AI can do is help you iterate against the brand tone a manner to make sure that it lands effectively in your media choices. But that’s the way we’re looking at it. A lot of it has to do with predictive analysis of like, okay, the customer tends to respond best in such and such place, so let’s make sure we double down in this approach in those places and get as many customers as we can to there. It’s really effective as we look at how we’re doing our advertising. 

 

For me, our paid social advertising, but as far as trying to create something new out of AI, that’s what humans are for. And I think that even those who work in more analytical focused areas, CRM or data and analytics, looking at overall business insights, there’s still a human element that has to interpret all of that information. So in our world, at least for Tommy John, and then really in most of the brands I’ve been involved with, AI’s responsibility has really largely been, okay, I’ll help take out that data and take that data and help spit it out into what you need rather than try to help you ascertain what that data actually all says.

 

Christine Schrader:

I think that’s right on and I want to make sure I was clear about, it’s not saying that it can’t do production and execution tasks. It is about customizing for audiences about personalization, but you have to give it the right inputs and you have to have the right oversight on the other side of it. But I also think that the thing that pulls out for me is if you’re looking at AI as a way to be able to just eliminate some of the hard creative work, strategic work, et cetera, it’s never going to be that it’s generative, but it’s not generative. It’s really working with the tools you’re giving it to be as effective as possible. 

 

And it can be a shortcut. It can be many different things, but it will have different capabilities depending on what you’re putting into it. And that really being a key focus for, I think especially leaders at organizations as they understand how to guide their teams on how to do this right, whether you have a chief AI officer or somebody in a cohort in your organization that’s specifically working that, or just on your team itself, making sure you’re giving the right guidance so that people feel both empowered to try and use these things, but also have guidance on how to do it without expecting too much or pointing it in the wrong direction.

 

Jenna Wigman:

I think that AI as a gimmick is not something that we see land very well, the Coca-Cola holiday ads being an example of that, but I think to what you guys have said that putting up the right guard rails is really, really important. Claire, how do you think that brands need to think about implementing AI in the right way for their needs?

 

Claire Perez:

The way I’ve thought about it, and I don’t know how many people are familiar with this, but it’s Patrick Lencioni’s Working Geniuses, which is basically the stages of an idea or a project. It spells widget wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity. So wonder that’s the what if part of it, the thing that starts everything. That’s basically the prompt of, and you need a human thinking. What if the invention, for sure, we’ve integrated AI chatGPT to kind of have a whole load of ideas. 

 

If I tell them, here’s my problem, here’s some websites that you can go and scan to find the solution, give me a load of ideas. So that invention piece is great for ideas at scale, but then a really important part is the discernment part. That’s the filtering through the ideas which ones make sense, which ones don’t, and you only know that as the owner of the brand, the steward of the brand dollars, right?

 

So the discernment part enablement is when, I’m sorry, galvanizing, no, that’s a team culture, everyone together thing enablement, that’s where AI can come back in. So we use that in a whole load of different ways. For example, our SMS provider is Postscript and we work with them to, they have an AI tool to kind of take our message and then test tons of different options of that and then find insights from it in terms of what’s resonating best, which has proven really successful. 

 

So the enablement of doing things at scale can be really benefited from AI. And then the tenacity part at the end of the widget is the human has to round it out and make sure that we are doing things properly and getting through the full gamut and learning what we can so that we can go back into the wonder element.

 

Jenna Wigman:

We all know that TikTok has been dominating the conversation in the headlines lately. So we know that we’ve got a January 19th deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US operations or risk a potential ban. With that looming in the news right now, we don’t know what’s going to happen. A ban is still really uncertain, but there’s a lot of industry conversation that’s been happening around that about the unique opportunities for brands on that particular platform and how it kind of raises the question that you need to have a more diversified media strategy. Claire, what do you think that brands can do to be prepared for any outcome that comes out of this?

 

Claire Perez:

First of all, figure out what the outcomes could be and do scenario planning around it and think in balancing that, the direct implications and the indirect implications. Let’s say direct implications. I spend X amount on TikTok that will wane potentially if it gets banned and then I won’t have that revenue. I’ll have to find a different place to spend that or get that custom through. Also, keeping in mind other scenarios, it gets sold last minute, it comes back, and there are lots of changes happening at the same time, so it may not, I don’t think it will be permanent either. 

 

So that’s the scenario planning or is it RedNote everyone’s moving to? Are there options there? Should I try that now? That’s the direct piece of I have campaigns on it. I need to change indirectly is the impact of what everyone else is doing. So let’s say the audience moves to a certain place or more worrying for me, the advertisers all move to a certain place and my CPMs go through the roof again. I mean, obviously performance marketers are always responsive, and adaptable to the different KPIs that they’re seeing. But I think just mapping out the potential scenarios, what some of the options are and whether there are things we should be doing Now if there’s a brand new thing to try on red node, on blue Sky or whatever, should we create an account now, get them set up now, get your invoicing done now and so that you can test into it even at a small scale before masse people move over.

 

Jenna Wigman:

There’s definitely a lot of “what ifs” in the various different scenarios. Right now, Jann, you mentioned that you are a big champion of going where the audience is. So do you think that having that kind of an omnichannel strategy can help safeguard brands from the volatile climate of social platforms right now?

 

Jann Parish:

I think a big piece of that is one, your distribution’s going to be key. So if you’re looking at what your wholesale partners look like, if you’re a DTC business, I think that’s really important to safeguard your business. I would say when we’ve looked at TikTok for Tommy John’s specifically, most of it has been about search and discovery with the exception of some of the women’s components of our business. So for us, that’s what we want to make sure that we’re always testing and learning into is where else is search and discovery going to happen, and then how can we turn that and monetize against it? I agree on the CPM concerns, I think that’s a really valid thing. I think part of the way that we’ve looked at combating that is how you build in some of your other pieces of the marketing mix from PR.

 

I think there’s some relevance to how you bring out of home, back into your business, direct mail, that sort of thing, and how you build audiences that way. And so I think we’re all consummate consumers. We’re always consuming information. So being able to diversify and think about it in lots of different ways, it’s what’s going to help safeguard your business. But I don’t think there’s a safe answer for what’s going to happen with TikTok or if it really in the end will matter because something else will take its place. It’s up to us to use widget to be constantly wondering what that thing could be and being smart about how you develop a test strategy against that.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Christine, as we’re waiting for the final decision to be made, how is Wpromote recommending brands allocate their media spend?

 

Christine Schrader:

I just Googled it hasn’t happened yet, just so everybody knows. So from a Wpromote perspective, we’re looking at a couple things and we’re big proponents of a diversified media mix, including social media specifically, which can help in anything. This isn’t just TikTok. We’ve seen volatility across every type of media channel there is. So you always want to mitigate that risk by having a nice, rich, diversified strategy. 

 

But what we’re looking at is really understanding what role TikTok is playing across a couple of different things because there’s the automatic Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, they’re the most similar in terms of the content type being delivered to the consumer, but are they delivering on everything tiktoks bringing? So one of the things we’ve been exploring is Reddit communities where people are going to get recommendations, et cetera. They, I think are really making a push to partner with brands in interesting ways, and that has some of that unique TikTok magic potion going on there because there’s an authenticity to it.

 

People trust people on there. There’s that going on. There’s the entertainment piece on something like Snapchat and bringing some of those kind of things where people are in more of this fun environment, et cetera. So I think part of it is not bringing a lot of assumptions. You’re looking at ad types, you’re looking at factors like how expensive it is. You’re looking at what audiences are going where, and I think to Jann’s point, you don’t need to just think about social media, right? Stop again, thinking in the channel terms and understand where other places where people are discovering, searching, verifying, trying to get word of mouth about what things are looking like, et cetera. That’s a big thing. And consistently testing into the next thing I think is really critical. Whatever new things come out, there will be new things, I think, as everybody agrees, but are they going to be a clubhouse or a TikTok? Are they going to hit, are they not going to? But staying ahead and really paying attention, having part of your budget set aside for experimenting with new channels, not just new ad types, et cetera, I think is really critical to be able to stay ahead of the curve and period, diversify your media mix. Make sure you are not overly dependent on any one given channel, and then you won’t be in as much danger when things are shifting very quickly.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Absolutely. Alright, we have just a couple of minutes left, so we’re going to dive into some questions from our audience. A question from Sam L, if you are mainly a B2B company, but also sell B2C, how do you walk the fine line to provide for more direct sales through social media while not upsetting your loyal retailers? I think that’s a relevant balance no matter what your audience is. Anyone want to take that?

 

Jann Parish:

I can give it a go. Sure. Look, I think what’s interesting about fashion in general or big branded businesses is that component of wholesale B2B in addition to how you’re looking at how you’re building brand awareness is important regardless of your channel and how you choose to sell your goods. Unless it’s in the case where you’re really focused on somebody’s private label business and that can be a little bit different and you’d have to rely on your wholesaler. But I do think that is a place where retail media networks are really important. It’s relationship with your key partners and it’s helping them grow their business overall with your kind of creative control in an interesting way that I think is really important.

 

Claire Perez:

I think in your measurement, if you have an MMM or a building an MMM, seeing what data you get from your retail partners and how you can integrate that towards the MMM so that you understand the impact that all of your media is having. Mainly measurement’s going to be the key part to know what has an impact and what doesn’t.

 

Jenna Wigman:

Amazing, and I think that’s all the time that we have for today. Thank you so much to Jann, Claire, and Christine and everybody in the audience who participated today, I wanted to do a final call out to one of our pieces of content that is down in that resource library, your changing customer retail media, social commerce and media convergence. This guy dives a little bit deeper into how your brand can navigate the changing media landscape. So this is a great resource as you leverage your planning. 

 

I know that there was a lot of conversation about the convergence of media today, so this is a really great resource for you. You can check that out in the resource center for instant download right now. You’ll get that white paper, today’s recording, and some other helpful resources in an email that you’ll get in your inbox next week. So stay tuned for details for that. And our next event. Thanks again to everybody. Wishing you luck as you kick off your 2025 planning. May your products sell out and your content go viral. Alright, bye everybody. Thanks so much for joining us for our event today.

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