By Rayomand J Patell
What’s 2025 going to be like? Since everyone and his uncle have put out their wraps for 2024, here’s my entirely subjective bunch of opinions about the year to come. No bottles of vodka were opened during the writing of this article, I promise.
We’re going to see WPP fold into itself. The venerable network will take good ol’ Ogilvy among others behind the barn and pull the trigger as they did with JWT, giving us a world in which OmniPublic (or whatever they choose to call the freshly merged Omnicom and IPG entity), WPP, Havas, Publicis and Dentsu are the only players left. From the Big Six to the Big Five. Will the Euro based Havas and Publicis start courting each other? Or will the very French Havas find love with the demure Asian beauty that is Dentsu? Time will tell. You read about it here first though. I see a future in which there are only the Big Four left a la the accounting world.
AI is going to be simultaneously the next big thing, the next small thing, and even the completely forgotten about thing. Hold that thought, let me explain. It’s going to be the forgotten thing because it’ll be like electricity, which lets fridges cool Coke allowing a billion dollar business to flourish. What we do with AI (my favourite example so far has been the work on missing children and what they might look like when grown up after all these years have passed). Interesting things that far outshine the genie in the bottle that’s making it happen.
As for the next big thing, I believe we’re still at iPhone One of equivalence. When we reach iPhone 4, that’s when we’ll be able to interconnect things in much more powerful workflows to create micro organisations and AI agents that will make billion dollar companies with under five employees possible.
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And finally, as with apps, AI will also be the next very tiny thing but one which adds an incredible amount of value to your life. It is my belief that the Internet Of Things once AI enabled will finally give birth to products we haven’t seen yet. Digital Cuckoo Clocks that change the way the cuckoo animates basis the weather. Schtoopid but fun all the same. I’d love one.
From the high falutin’ to the low brow of crass commerce, what course AI takes when the Copyright Lawyers get in on the action in the largest class action suits seen since the days of Big Tobacco, is moot. While it is tempting to be a complete Luddite and say AI shouldn’t be trained upon the creative efforts of others, we’ve seen this picture before, of Limewire versus the Music Industry. Money always makes everything work, and so artists who get paid a la musicians on Spotify or Apple Music may well agree to have their work in public domain. Alternatively, should they choose to opt out, their exposure might be curtailed. We live in interesting times for sure, on this score. My bet? That money and a lot of it will change hands and creators will be given their fair due to let LLMs learn upon their output.
Moving on, I believe Meta and Google as the world’s display networks will face a significant disruption. Aside from oceans of ad fraud. Yes they can serve the right message to the right person at the right time. But advertising is about generalisation of awareness to large oceans worth of audiences, rather than micro targeting at this ‘bottom of funnel’ nerd holy grail. If you were going to buy something you’d buy it anyway. Personally, if Microsoft suddenly finds a new leader to rally around, owned digital assets in the form of websites really can make both social networks and display ads sweat for ad dollars in 2025. Make websites great again in 2025 is what I feel someone will work hard towards. It still gets my goat, that Meta is essentially charging you to talk to your own hard won followers.
It is my belief that DOOH and Mobile in particular, will hook up and find everlasting passion. Outdoor has been enjoying a quiet resurgence over the last 12 months and with DOOH and the possibilities it offers, when given an overlay of things you can do that complement the brand message, through your phone, with a little bit of generative AI in real time even… we’re going to see some mad magic happen. The future is here and at the Laqshya Group yours truly is working hard to harness it for clients. If you’d like to know more on the power of merging large spectacle with tech personalisation for your brand, hit me up.
And last but not the least, agencies are going to reorder themselves in terms of quality. At the very top end, will be the hand made Swiss watch equivalents. Humans making ads for humans will be a luxury only the top end of the market can buy. Then, there’ll be a vast ocean of the middle, all the way from the Omegas to the Timexes. And right at the bottom, will be novelty timepieces. Rubber alarm clocks you can fling about the room in frustration for example. Time, (no pun intended), will tell.
Have a lovely Christmas and see you in 2025!
Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.