2025 Ins & Outs—Brand Strategy & Narrative Edition
“Infinite choice is its own type of hell.” “Bland copy = brain-numbing.”
Happy new year, you nerds! ;-)
One thing about me: I'm obsessed with trend predictions. Not just because they're fun to read (they are), but because I love watching how the pendulum swings between extremes, trying to decode what these shifts reveal about our collective psyche.
There’s something masochistically human in seeing our collective hopes and anxieties reflected in where we spend our money.
Today we're diving into eight storylines I see dominating the brand conversation in 2025. Why storylines and not trends? Because trends come and go, but storylines reveal the deeper narratives shaping how we consume and connect.
Here's what we'll explore:
The AI Shopping Assistant: Our new digital personal shopper (whether we like it or not)
Hyper-Personalization: The death of one-size-fits-all branding
Micro-Communities: The rise of highly specific, deeply engaged groups
The Return of the Tastemaker: Because infinite choice is exhausting
Modern Heritage & Traditions: Old things made new again
The Chosen Family: New households, new rules
The Silver Economy: Redefining what it means to age
The Analog Experience: Why physical touchpoints matter more than ever
Btw, if you’re new here, hi - I’m Arriane, a writer, brand consultant, user research & consumer psychology nerd. If you’re into the same things, I hope you can consider subscribing!
2025 will be for the bold, brave, fun, indulgent
The 2025 forecasts at first glance look like classic pendulum swings. Pinterest predicts "chaos cakes" and "surreal soirées" replacing minimalist aesthetics. The New Consumer reports steaks and cocktails dethroning green juices and non-alcoholic spirits.
All signs point towards 2025 being a year of excess, indulgence, big personality, and fanciful ornamentation. Every signal suggests we're done with the vibe-cession's forced austerity. People are ready to indulge again.
I've been consuming a lot of these forecasts lately, piecing together what I think they mean for brands and marketing in 2025.
But here's the thing—while most brand people rightfully obsesses over Gen Z culture, fashion, and beauty, I'm fascinated by consumer behavior and branding through the lens of belonging, home, and community-building.
The housing market, community/loyalty apps or activations, furniture industry, outdoor brands, wellness spaces, the aging market, even childcare—these are the places where I see the most compelling shifts happening that WILL trickle down to so many other places. (Also, not every interesting brand story is coming from the usual suspects like Glossier or Rhode or Merit.)
And since I know many of you work in branding too, I'd love to know:
What signals are you picking up (that I might have missed below)? What patterns are you seeing in your corner of the industry? Read through my predictions below and let's compare notes!
- Arriane
STORY LINE #1:
THE AI SHOPPING ASSISTANT
I know. *eye roll* AI again?! But I don't want to bury the lede here—I think this is going to be big for brand strategy.
Bloomberg Businessweek recently published an insight that I think is going to be crucial for brands in 2025: AI chatbots are fundamentally changing how people search for and discover products. So did Forbes and Good Thinking.
This can potentially be a STRUCTURAL shift in how the internet works. (Even Google knows their AI offering is cannibalizing their search economics.)
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
For decades, Google's search bar has been our gateway to product discovery and purchase decisions. But that model is starting to crack. As the article headline above reads, early adopters are increasingly turning to AI chatbots instead of traditional search. Hundreds of thousands of people are actually paying $20 monthly for premium AI tools. When people start paying for something they've gotten free for 25 years (search), it's worth paying attention.
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
This shift matters because the entire internet economy is built around traditional search behavior. Google knows it. The big tech companies know it; they're betting billions on it. Amazon's Rufus, Google's shopping AI, Perplexity's shop integration.
Instead of drowning in options, we'll simply ask: "Hey Alexa, what's the best hypoallergenic detergent for sensitive skin under $30?"
And here's what's fascinating: these AIs won't just check prices, product descriptions, reviews, and internet search content—they'll understand YOUR context, your location, remember preferences, and previous purchases.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
Here's a sobering brand research exercise: Go to ChatGPT or Amazon's Rufus and ask about products the way your customers would. Try "What's a good moisturizer for oily, sensitive skin in your 30s?" or "What's the best coffee maker for a small apartment?" What products come up? (competitive research) Does YOUR product come up? (strategy and tactic-driving insights)
I personally think Q1 to Q2 of 2025 are make-or-break time for smart brands to lay down their AI strategy. Because once these shopping assistants become the primary way people discover products, being properly understood by AI will be as crucial as having good SEO was in years past.
Opportunities I'm watching:
Restructure product information and brand story to be easily parsed and accurately represented by AI shopping assistants, as in, conversational search. Look into hiring a brand content expert.
Be very, very, very smart about content creator collabs moving forward—again, remembering how AI trawls the internet for context and trust markers
Look into brands behaving more & more like media companies—building a framework for world-building AND trust signals and more context for AI language models
STORY LINE #2:
HYPER-PERSONALIZATION
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
When Warby Parker launched, their minimal, direct-to-consumer approach revolutionized the industry. However, after a decade of imitation, that Warby aesthetic (IYKYK) has become the default template for every VC-backed DTC brand.
Perhaps when you needed to grow fast and scale bigger, looking "safe" and broadly appealing seemed like the smart bet. Standing out felt too risky when you had aggressive growth targets to hit.
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
This is the collision of several forces: First, skyrocketing digital ad costs. Second, the online market is SATURATED AF and product enshittification is real. Third, AI tech is enabling a lot of personalization at scale. Think: Spotify Wrapped, but for everything.
The most successful brands understand that personalization isn't just about using someone's name in an email. It's about making each customer feel like the brand was built specifically for people like them. And it’s about making the journey—from discovery to purchase—more personal.
Acting like a small business is the new big, that’s my hot take.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
People are tired of the one-size-fits-all approach to storytelling. Bland captions and visuals = brain-numbing. The brands winning in 2025 will 1) have a VERY clear point of view, and 2) use data to create hyper-targeted content and deeply personalized experiences.
Opportunities I'm watching:
User research, user research, user research. The base of any hyper-personalization strategy. (And one of my favorite things to design and execute.) When was the last time you did a (well-designed) research interview with an actual customer? Learn about your customers as people instead of as demographics or Lookalike Audiences.
Get even more granular about your brand voice—what pop culture things do you reference, what podcasts do you listen to, what’s your star sign, etc. A great in-house brand writer (versus an outsourced agency; another hot take) can be key here.
Review your funnel. Instead of throwing every single person into the exact same landing page, exact same email funnel—in what ways can you get super-hyper-MEGA-targeted with what content people see on your platforms or receive in their inboxes?
Partner with niche influencers—aim to be the first brand to partner with an influencer, instead of going with that one lady everybody else partners with.
STORY LINE #3:
MICRO-COMMUNITY ON TOP OF HYPER-PERSONALIZATION
This builds off of Trend 2 above: Hyper-personalized micro-communities.
But here's the key: successful community building isn't just about creating another Slack channel or Discord server. Take Dropbox's attempt at a creative community—a Slack channel “for creatives”—vague premise and purpose = lots of tentative introductions, hi/hello, lackluster engagement.
Compare that to ilovecreatives' thriving Slack channels for their students or Link In Bio's focused and helpful Discord community. The difference? Specific purpose, clear value, and genuine connection points between members. (And often a really good community organizer.)
📝 What This Means For Brands:
Community is sooooo tricky to get right. My take? You NEED to have a good community organizer on your team. Someone who’s very, very good at making people feel seen, like they belong, like they’re being listened to. A truly passionate community advocate who cares about designing experiences that serve real needs for specific groups.
Opportunities I'm watching:
Build communities around specific shared challenges or goals, not vague interests. It doesn’t have to be an app or an online platform, it can be regular events. For this, see Tracksmith’s weekly Sunday runs called Church of The Long Run.
Create clear pathways for community members to help each other, not just interact with the brand. For this, see Link In Bio’s paid subscribers Discord server.
Ty Haney’s TYB, where you play-to-earn collectibles and rewards from your favorite brands, may be on to something.
Micro-communities is not an activity for scale. As groups get larger, the less effective (and more bland) they become. Just keep that in mind. Again, a great community organizer can design ways to keep a group from getting stale. (And I don’t just mean icebreakers)
STORY LINE #4:
THE RETURN OF THE TASTEMAKER
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
The democratic internet promised to free us from gatekeepers, turning everyone into a critic and curator. But infinite choice was its own type of hell: Try finding a decent moisturizer on Amazon - you'll spend three hours reading conflicting reviews, only to end up more confused than when you started. When everything is a sponsored post and every review could be fake, the abundance of options becomes paralyzing rather than liberating.
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
The gatekeepers are back, and a lot of them are actually right here, on Substack. Subscribers gladly pay $50-100 a year for to access someone's taste and ideas, someone to scour the endless pit of the Internet for them and tell them what's actually GOOD. You can now choose whose specific taste you want to align with, versus just relying on a few magazine editors.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
Brands are perfectly positioned to be the tastemakers in this scenario. BUT this isn't about creating another sponsored content blog. If you work in brand, then you’ve heard of world-building, and right now, that means content = context. Build trust through expertise and an extremely specific point of view. Don’t just post about your products.
Opportunities I'm watching:
Hire/poach/partner with actual tastemakers, creatives, and writers to create a world of media around your brand, not just content creators. Think: guest editors for your newsletter, co-branded podcast episodes, tastemakers from Substack (i.e. Jess from The Love List, Ochuko from As Seen On, Alisha from Downtime, Emily from Feed Me, Caroline of Gee Thanks Just Bought It, etc).
Examples/ideas for world-building through content/context: Liquid Death behaving more like Netflix, Flamingo Estate releasing books, Fishwife releasing a cookbook, Molly Baz’s cooking club, etc.
STORY LINE #5:
MODERN HERITAGE: TRADITIONS REINVENTED
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
For the past few decades, we've watched traditional institutions crumble: organized religion, civic organizations, trust in government, etc. But as anyone who's studied anthropology could tell you, humans need ritual and tradition like we need food and water. If we’re not finding it in the usual ways, we’re finding tradition SOMEWHERE. And studies show we’re finding it in… brands.
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
We're seeing a fascinating resurgence of traditional elements, but reimagined for modern life. Pinterest's data shows surging interest in medieval ‘castlecore’ aesthetics, Rococo revival. What's particularly interesting is how this spans demographics: both Gen Z and Boomers are driving this trend toward classic design elements.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
This shift isn't just about aesthetics—it's about creating new frameworks for meaning and connection in a world where traditional frameworks have failed. Brands have an opportunity to help people build new traditions and create modern heirlooms.
Opportunities I'm watching:
You don’t have to do a complete visual rebrand, but now’s a great time to play with more traditional aesthetics in 2025 campaigns/art direction. Think: monograms, serifs, stripes, tapestry-like patterns, medieval/traditional fonts, crown molding, wall paneling.
Create products around the idea of heirlooms, with stories and provenance built into their DNA. One brand who’s done this well: MERIT when they launched Retrospect, their first foray into fragrance. (One thing’s for sure, MERIT has a damn good brand writer.)
Develop rituals and ceremonies around your brand that fill the gap left by declining traditional institutions. See: Pinterest Predicts ‘nesting parties’ as a big 2025 trend.
STORY LINE #6:
THE CHOSEN FAMILY
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
The American dream used to have a pretty standard script: move out of your parents' house, get married, buy a home, have kids. But that script doesn't work when a starter home costs half a million dollars and childcare costs more than college. The nuclear family is no longer the default. It's becoming just one option among many.
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
As of 2022, 43% of households in America were childless. What we’re seeing: Friends are buying houses together, splitting groceries, creating modern versions of communes. These aren't temporary arrangements - they're new forms of permanent household, complete with their own economies and decision-making structures. Many millennial parents who lack support & a social safety net DREAM of living in a multi-family community of friends.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
Every time I see another brand's marketing assuming "household" equals nuclear family, I wonder how long until they catch up to reality. Living spaces and arrangements have been changing. If you’re in the food/home/design/hospitality/groceries industry for example, how might you rethink how to serve these new family structures?
Opportunities I'm watching:
Multigenerational living is ALSO going to be big moving forward, for all the reasons I outlined above. There will be boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, Gen Z, Alphas all under one roof. Think about what that means!
From group banking apps to shared subscription models, there's huge potential in tools/services that help chosen families manage their shared lives.
STORY LINE #7:
THE SILVER ECONOMY
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
Today's retirees aren't just surviving, they're wining, dining, traveling, dating, strength training, and reshaping what it means to age. (I was doing customer research for a brand lately and talked with a 60+ year old who sold their house in Brooklyn, bought a beautiful house in a small town, and is spending almost every day hiking, biking, canoeing, signing up for all kinds of classes, attending concerts, hosting dinners, making new friends, and buying finer things in life.)
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
Humans are just… living longer. We have the largest, wealthiest, and most active senior population in history hitting their peak spending years. They're driving luxury travel trends, attending boutique fitness classes, and reshaping housing markets. Silvers are a legitimately vibrant marketing demographic these days.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
Don’t just add an older age range to your ad targeting—the silver market is becoming VITAL infrastructure (and influence) for younger generations. These consumers have home equity in a housing crisis, time for childcare in a childcare crisis, and an appetite for community in a loneliness epidemic. Understand what that means for your specific industry.
Opportunities I'm watching:
Senior wellness ads vs. senior sickness ads. Gym subscriptions specifically for over 50s. High-end senior housing communities that aren’t sad or senile. Community spaces.
Multigenerational living/housing—more millennials moving back in with their parents, or Gen Z’ers never moving out in the first place.
Expect to see more and more and more older people featured in ads/creative/content—like the BMW ad above, the show The Man on The Inside on Netflix, etc.
Got more examples for the silver economy? I’m all ears & very fascinated—send me an email back or a message through the button below!
STORY LINE #8:
THE ANALOG EXPERIENCE
🫸 What We're Moving Away From:
Remember when luxury meant having the biggest house, the flashiest car, the most obvious status symbols? That era of conspicuous consumption has been fading for a while now. (See: athleisure) Traditional markers of status have lost their power.
⏱️ What Makes This Moment Different:
The real luxury market in 2025 isn't about what you own—it's about what you do. Expensive experiences > expensive things. The biggest flex right now is spending on services and experiences—think personal chefs, au pairs. Or maybe a $500 running retreat where you learn trail techniques from Olympic athletes, a $400 natural wine tasting where you meet the vintner, etc.
📝 What This Means For Brands:
Online shopping is feeling stale and frustrating. More in-person activations. Better store experiences. The more premium your product is, the more in-person/physical strategies you should be thinking of. More customer acquisition on the ground, through stores/pop-ups. Time-bound community challenges.
This better analog experience can also mean: Interesting direct mail. Well-made print magazines. Limited-edition zines.
The Feed Is Full: 6 brands returning to print
“Maybe we're all just tired. While the internet is forever, forever is exhausting. Sometimes you want your content to end. Sometimes you want to hold something real.”
Opportunities I'm watching:
Pop-ups and brick-and-mortars: There’s merit in a Glossier-like pop-up where people line up for $15 lip balms and stickers, yes. But the more premium your product is, think more about deeper in-person experiences that focus on learning and personal growth rather than just entertainment or purely shopping.
Design spaces and programs around specific rituals or activities that build genuine community.
Partner with or hire a community organizer/manager—not just one who replies to comments on Instagram/Tiktok, but can actually design community experiences VERY well. Look into workshop facilitators and their ilk.
Let’s End Here… For Now
There’s so much more on my mind, but I think I’ll end here. Again, these are just that: predictions—it’s truly more of an exercise for me to go through all my notes from 2024 and analyze for patterns, themes, then make educated guesses from there.
And of course, if 2020 taught us anything, it's that the world can change overnight: a political upheaval, climate disaster, or global conflict (all of which we’re precariously close to) could emerge tomorrow and completely reshape EVERYTHING.
But that's what makes trend-watching so fascinating—it's not just about guessing what's next, it's about understanding who we are right now through the lens of what we want and fear. :-)
Drop me a note—I'm dying to hear what signals you're picking up in YOUR industry. Which predictions feel spot-on, and which ones make you think "absolutely not"? Share the goss, I love nerdy tea. ;-)
And of course, I would appreciate it if you could share this article on your socials, it took a heck of a lot of time and research, and sharing it with others would mean a lot. :-) Hope you had a wonderful holiday season!
- Arriane
This is awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing the growth in brand opportunities around the silver economy and the return of tastemakers. I think we need some form of gatekeepers back, expertise has fallen by the wayside due to the rise of influencers who peddle anything they’re paid for. We need real hands on product expertise back.
loved loved loved this! such a well-researched + well-written read :)