Five key marketing trends for 2025

As 2025 approaches, many changes in the marketing industry in 2024 are thought-provoking. From the rational return of e-commerce to the explosion of emotional marketing, these trends not only reshape the marketing landscape, but also provide valuable references for brands on how to accurately position themselves and innovate strategies in the new year.

Standing at the beginning of 2025, looking back at the marketing industry in 2024, Lei Jun's Xiaomi car sales set off a trend of founders creating IPs; jellycat-style marketing became popular, and local cultural tourism and major new consumer brands followed suit; IP value, millet economy, drama and variety show implantation, brand expansion... became one annual keyword after another.

This year, we explored the ultimate ROI and looked for new traffic blue oceans. We saw consumers return to rationality and merchants gradually shift from big promotions to daily life. We saw the rapid development of technology. Sora, GPT-o1, and large models for industries were launched one after another, and AI was truly integrated into the workflow...

Here, Morketing summarizes five major trends from hot events, looking back on 2024 and foreseeing 2025.

01 Big promotion IP cools down, big anchors are frustrated, and e-commerce enters a cooling-off period

First, in terms of e-commerce, the 618 shopping festival that was shut down, the scattered Double Eleven shopping festival, and the quietly departed Double Twelve shopping festival have all led to a return to rationality in e-commerce this year. Platforms no longer use the slogan of “the lowest price on the entire network”, and brands have also shifted their focus from big promotions to daily sales.

The low-price strategy was to continue from 2023 to 618 in 2024, but this tactic failed this year. Star Chart data shows that during the 618 Shopping Festival in 2024, the total sales of the entire network was 742.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7%. Among them, the total sales of shelf e-commerce platforms Tmall, JD.com and Pinduoduo totaled 571.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.9%. This set of data shows that low prices have not effectively stimulated consumers to place orders, and have not driven the rapid growth of e-commerce platform performance. At the same time, it has also compressed the profit space of brands.

Therefore, on Double Eleven, major platforms no longer insisted on low prices, but instead emphasized quality. Taobao launched the slogan of "quality and good price", while JD.com changed from "really cheap" to "cheap and good". Although the two gameplays of "one piece direct reduction" and "official instant reduction" launched by Douyin are strongly related to price, it also proposed to make "good content" the core of the platform's growth.

A month later, there was almost no noise about Double 12. Taobao replaced Double 12 with the "Year-End Good Price Festival". JD.com did not announce the details of investment promotion and promotion as in previous years. Pinduoduo seemed to have only made some changes to the icon.

The popularity of these big promotion IPs is gradually cooling down, and along with it is the platforms and brands’ reliance on big anchors.

According to Analysys International, the transaction volume of China's live streaming e-commerce market will grow at a year-on-year rate of 12.6% in the second quarter of 2024, the lowest in the past two years. The influence of top anchors is also declining. Some media have revealed that top anchors who once could sell tens of billions of GMV with just a few moves can now only achieve half of the sales.

In addition, frequent failures have caused the anchors to lose their aura of trust. Faced with the already high slot fees, brands naturally began to reconsider.

Brother Yang was fined frequently this year. "Hong Kong Meicheng Mooncakes" became the last straw. The illegal income was confiscated and the fine totaled 68.9491 million yuan. It has not yet resumed broadcasting. The sweet potato powder promoted by Sister Yu from the Northeast was cracked down and fined 1.65 million yuan for false advertising. Even Dong Yuhui's reputation declined because of the "mooncake" incident...

On the contrary, the proportion of store broadcasts and digital human broadcasts is increasing. In April, after JD.com President Liu Qiangdong’s AI digital human appeared in the live broadcast room, during the 618 period, many founders and CEOs of Gree, Dong Mingzhu, Hisense, Hu Jianyong, LG, Li Dongshan, and Miniso, Ye Guofu, also used digital humans for live broadcasts.

If we look at the entire ecosystem, the fall of big anchors means that live streaming e-commerce has calmed down to a certain extent, while shelf e-commerce has returned to consumers' daily shopping. According to forecasts, the compound annual growth rate of live streaming e-commerce will further drop to 18% in the next three years, gradually returning to normal. Shelf e-commerce scenarios represented by Douyin Mall account for more than 30% of Douyin e-commerce, and more and more brands are beginning to increase their investment in shelf e-commerce.

Overall, whether it is the big promotions, the cooling of live streaming, or the frustration of big anchors, if we summarize this year's e-commerce, it is to return to rationality and build long-term plans. Users, brands, and platforms are no longer fanatically pursuing low prices and live streaming consumption driven by rhetoric.

02 Super KOL, founder takes the stage

The reason why anchors are “silencing” themselves is that traffic is getting more and more expensive. In the past two years, companies don’t have the budget to cast a wide net. But because of this, another group of “big anchors” are gradually gaining momentum, that is, the personal IP of company founders or executives. Companies try to create a super anchor that is exclusive to the brand, free of charge, and can gain the most trust from consumers.

This year, Xiaomi has attracted many fans with this trick, and even achieved the best financial report in history in Q3. It can be said that Xiaomi SU7, from production to stable landing, and then to the achievement of more than 130,000 units delivered throughout the year, is almost inseparable from the blessing of Lei Jun's personal IP.

Before SU7 was launched, Lei Jun began to post videos related to factory manufacturing on his own account, using his personal IP to build momentum for SU7; on the day of the press conference, the number of online viewers was close to 2 million; after the press conference, Lei Jun's Douyin account gained 4.05 million followers in nearly 30 days. Since then, he has brought the "Xiaomi Team" to Douyin and created a marketing matrix, including "The male protagonist of the novel walks into reality", "The boss worth 300,000 billion opens the door for me", and "The Singer" ranks first... He constantly creates and plays with netizens, forming a tap water.

Seeing the dividends, the bigwigs in the technology circle have stepped out to create their own IPs. Zhou Hongyi first attracted a lot of attention with events such as sitting on the roof of a car at an auto show and replacing his Maybach with new energy vehicles. At the same time, he posted videos of either teaching or daily life on major social media, saying that it is a compulsory course for entrepreneurs to open their own accounts and create IPs. Li Yunfei, general manager of BYD Brand and Public Relations Department, Li Bin, CEO of NIO, and Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue Automobile, have successively live-streamed test drives to promote their own products.

A wave of founder IPs has also emerged in the beauty industry. Of course, we will not discuss brands that revolve around founders, such as Mao Geping and Tang Yi's Caitang and Fan Bingbing's Fan Beauty. The more representative ones are Yujian, Fangli and Zhuben, three new consumer brands. They are not purely for the purpose of advertising their own products, but based on their own backgrounds, they share entrepreneurial stories, industry observations, and discuss social hot spots on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. The content is similar to that of growth bloggers, using content to leverage fan growth and make products and brands more humane.

If we broaden our thinking a little bit, not only the founders, but also the second generation of the companies are actively developing their personal IPs. Holiland's "Boss Luo Cheng", Jieliya's "Towel Master", and Xtep Princess' "Ding Jiamin Annie" all have very good data performance on Douyin this year. They are also not doing hard advertising, but organizing content based on the logic of internet celebrities. Take the video of "Towel Master" as an example. The unrefined pictures, nonsensical funny stories, and some deliberately designed cool plots are very suitable for the ecology of short videos. Moreover, telling stories in his own identity is an advertisement in itself. He is the "internet celebrity" with the deepest brand binding.

Many mature brands will encounter the problem of aging when they reach a certain stage of development. How to communicate with young consumers? At the marketing level, the second generation of entrepreneurs is a better idea to create IP. Brands that have come from the era of mass media need to adapt to the fragmentation of media and find opportunities for communication.

In fact, all the successful IPs, whether they are technology brands, new consumer brands, or old brands, have grasped the word "close", getting closer to consumers and lowering their posture to play with users. In the era of information fragmentation, authority is invalid, and users are the only judges. All communication must be transformed from "transmitter-centered" to "receiver-centered". Related reading: "Boss" becomes "Internet celebrity", how to build personal IP? Executives join Douyin, bigwigs go live: Why are car companies so anxious?

03 Jellycat-style marketing is popular, emotion + experience = Kidult trap

In 2024, brands were all captivated by the little dolls with smiling faces.

The explosion point can be traced back to the joint event between The Beast and Jellycat on May 20. At that time, a video of a store clerk packing a Jellycat doll went viral on the Internet. In the video, the clerk pretended to water and fertilize the plush toy flower while telling the seller to take good care of it. The sense of belief was something that our consumers probably haven't seen since they left kindergarten. As a result, this model instantly became popular and attracted a lot of imitations.

The first to follow suit was the Gansu Museum, which took advantage of the popularity of Tianshui Malatang in June to launch a version of Malatang called Jellycat, which also provided immersive services, including on-site boiling, packaging, and selection of spiciness. Soon, during the National Day holiday, cultural and tourism industries across the country followed suit, including Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Northeast China, which launched similar products, using local specialties to make plush toys and performing "playing house"-style packaging services for tourists.

In terms of brands, new tea drinks are leading the way. In September, Shanghai Auntie launched new autumn products and created the "Shanghai Plush Dessert Shop" in 4 stores across the country; in October, Nayuki's Tea launched new products and also launched plush toy peripherals; in November, Bawang Tea Princess and Jasmine Milk White successively launched cup plush toys similar to Jellycat; in December, McDonald's also opened a pop-up store to make burgers (plush toy version) on site.

There are two key points in Jellycat-style marketing: immersive packaging and plush toys.

The store clerks become actors, creating atmosphere and experience to pry open the emotional fluctuations of consumers, hiding consumption under performative behavior. Does it sound familiar? Just like Disney, each pop-up store is a small theme park.

As British sociologist Alan Briman wrote in The Disney Storm, our society is becoming Disney-like, and consumption is no longer an end in itself, but a part of the experience. Space design has also shifted from meeting functional needs to providing emotional value.

In a sensory consumption scenario like Jellycat-style marketing, what is more worthy of attention than promoting consumption is the ability to easily build an emotional connection with consumers.

Psychologically speaking, toys act as "transitional objects" in the process of children's growth, providing them with a sense of security. This attachment to toys will not completely disappear even after adulthood. Moreover, in modern society, people are more likely to be matured by the social clock. On the surface, they seem to have entered the next stage and developed a sufficiently perfect "objective self", but the inner "subjective self" is stagnant, struggling, confused, and stays in the previous period.

Therefore, Kidult (kid+adult, referring to adults with a childlike innocence) hopes to see and reflect on their inner self through the social behavior of consumption. In this behavior, the brand plays the role of supply, providing toys, performances, emotional value, and then establishing a deep connection.

It's not just Jellycat. Some classic IPs also follow a similar principle. When you buy a product, you get anime character peripherals for free, or the IP is made into a product. In fact, it is to express that our brand understands you.

04 Brands bet on content value, and both long and short dramas and variety shows have breakthroughs

Content value-added is also a trend that cannot be ignored this year, with both long and short dramas experiencing breakthroughs.

At the beginning of the year, the TV series "Fang Hua" gave us a textbook example of what brand placement is. A year later, we can still remember Mr. Bao's handsome Armani coat, the Remy Martin drinks to celebrate, the Estee Lauder in the window, the Pepsi in the convenience store... It shows how big a long-tail effect a good TV series can bring to a brand.

Then, the product placement of "Joy of Life 2" also frequently went viral, and even ranked because there were too many sponsors. When mentioning brands such as Chunzhen Yogurt, Dong'e Ejiao, and Pechoin, the audience can quickly associate them with the scenes and lines in the play; "My Altay" has set off a cultural tourism boom. The number of tourists received in Altay increased by 80.65% year-on-year, and tourism revenue increased by 93.19% year-on-year;

"Mo Yu Yun Jian" took advantage of the 618 event to create the first IP-exclusive Tmall venue, and also launched a spin-off drama to continue to activate Tmall's consumer mindset; "The Story of Rose" not only benefited a number of brands in the drama, such as Jindian and Wyeth, but also spilled its value outside the drama. Luckin Coffee's new co-branded products sold well, and the search volume for Huang Yimei's same-style windbreaker soared.

There are also many examples of variety shows going viral. "The Singer" not only gave birth to many popular memes, but also won product placements from 24 brands; Xie Tiandi's violent marketing in "The Sound of the Greater Bay Area" made everyone pay attention to this little-known dairy brand; KFC's investment in "Goodbye Love" because of its smoked chicken made everyone say that it had snatched business from McDonald's; and a number of comedy variety shows have innovatively integrated advertising into jokes and works.

In terms of long videos, brands are clearly more enthusiastic about sponsorship this year. According to Jirang Technology data, the number of variety show investment clients increased by 17.5% in the first half of 2024, and the number of drama investment clients increased by 57.3%, and there are several characteristics in the implantation:

First, the gameplay is more diverse. In addition to small theaters, patches, and oral broadcasts, the previously novel fancy barrage has now become standard, and derivative dramas customized for brands are also a new gameplay;

Secondly, the timing is more flexible. There are opportunities to follow up investment during filming, broadcasting, and after broadcasting. If a show becomes popular, you can invest immediately. Many brands have also opened up their minds and follow up investment in the first show after the second show is broadcast.

Finally, closer integration, on the one hand, refers to closer integration between online and offline. The brand is not just implanted online, and offline pop-up stores have also become standard. Some will also change the product packaging or launch related gift boxes. On the other hand, it refers to closer ties with spokespersons. Many brands will sponsor the spokesperson's dramas, hoping to produce a 1+1>2 effect and maximize the use of resources.

In terms of short dramas, brands are more dominant this year, with less storytelling and more brand promotion. They have changed from being mainly product placements to being self-produced, and the plots are also centered around brands. With the participation of some catering brands and Internet brands, short dramas are also broadening their boundaries and no longer revolve around beauty and makeup. "The Snow King's Time Travel Diary", "Rebirth: I Practicing Magic at McDonald's", "I Opened a Starbucks in Ancient Times", these cases have broken the stereotype that short dramas are only for the pursuit of excitement.

05 AI embedded in the workflow can solve the drawbacks

The trend of AI has been around for many years. In the past, we might still be discussing concepts and some relatively rough cases. This year, we have seen more practical results of generative AI, and there are new ideas in the entire chain of "insight-content generation-delivery-service".

In terms of insights, the biggest innovation AI brings is that it is more vivid and warmer. In the past, insights into consumers, markets, products, etc. were relatively rigid, and were a pile of data that needed to be analyzed again, but AI can see the real pain points and needs of users. These results come from the product experience posted by users online, and from real conversations between users and sales staff. Based on insights into people, the generated content, products, and strategies are naturally more resonant and more accurate.

In terms of content generation, video is definitely the highlight of this year. On February 16, 2024, OpenAI released the "text-to-video" tool - Sora. As soon as the news came out, it triggered heated discussions among marketers. One person will become a camera team. Soon, ByteDance, Kuaishou, Tencent, 360... Various Internet companies also launched their own video generation models.

This year, some brands have begun to use AI to make large-scale TVCs, such as the Jianlibao 40th anniversary commercial. However, there are still many controversies about AI commercials, mainly focusing on the mismatch between the core advertising ideas and the presentation methods.

At present, AI videos are mainly used in small videos to promote content. The main improvements are efficiency and cost. It saves manpower, and the lack of shooting can also solve some other problems.

For example, for pet food, the cooperation of cats and dogs is very time-consuming, so Yili uses AI to complete videos, allowing AI to simulate cats and dogs, and perform short dramas and creative productions every day. Without being informed, it is almost impossible to distinguish whether it is produced by AI or actually shot. For example, the grass-planting videos in the home appliance industry need to be adapted to the style of experts. Either you spend time looking for suitable experts or spend a lot of money to reinstall them. In short, the cost of a grass-planting video is also very high. AI does not have this worry. With the product picture, you can have any style you want.

In terms of advertising, more and more brands are willing to use AI to monitor advertising effects and then adjust strategies. At the same time, they also see more clearly the advantages of AI in real-time bidding.

In terms of services, AI digital humans and AI customer service that are available around the clock are becoming popular choices, and personalized services are gradually being realized, changing the way of interaction and turning advertising into services.

It is also worth noting that in addition to the enthusiasm for AI this year, there is also a sense of calmness, and marketers have begun to focus on how to solve the side effects brought about by AI.

Regarding the problem of loss of stylization, Weibo Easy to Talk said that HAI is the truly effective AI for the B-side. The difference of HI is that it is customized exclusively for enterprises. HI can optimize model parameters based on the understanding of brand tone, products, and scenarios, and ultimately generate an infectious brand-stylized creative video.

Regarding the issue of privacy risk, Zhang Jie, vice president of IT & Data for Greater China, Asia Pacific, Danone, said that the first step in promoting AI is to do a good job in AI governance, and the second step is to shift security prevention and control to the left. Whether it is privacy risk or the management of copyright information leakage, it needs to be taken into consideration from the first day of design.

06 Conclusion

In general, Morketing believes that there is one thing in common in the five directions mentioned above, that is, in the stock market, brands are eager to achieve growth with a smaller budget.

According to the "2024 China Digital Marketing Trend Report" released by the Miaozhen Marketing Science Academy, China's overall confidence in marketing investment in 2024 is insufficient, and 43% of advertisers believe that overall marketing investment will decrease, of which 13% believe that it will decrease significantly and 30% believe that it will decrease slightly.

So we see that brands have reduced their investment in big promotions and big anchors; founders have become free and versatile KOLs by creating IPs; campfire marketing like Jellycat has become a favorite of brands; and the placement of products in dramas and variety shows is not only for brand exposure but also for results; AI, as the new quality productivity that can best achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement, has been rapidly implemented within a year.

In the coming year 2025, we will still face considerable challenges, but at the same time, we can also find many solutions that go with the flow.

Text｜Tiana