Cold reality.
We may have barely crested meteorological summer but, oddly enough, I've already got a hot take on 2025:
It's already been a long four years. And, damn, we're only through year one.
So, okay, not trying to infuse platform-irritating politics into the always delightful mélange of AI evangelizing and doomsaying, rebranding dissing and culture-warring, pontification, self-promotion and always more of same, but the sense of rising headwinds is palpable and I'm thinking thusly:
First, maybe LinkedIn needs to break the monotony with a few random cat videos.
Second, it might be time for all of us to re-read the "marketing into a downturn" playbook, rewrite the more dog-eared chapters, and get prepared to shepherd our brands through what could be a truly crappy dip.
That is, assuming we’re reading the same tea leaves.
Sticky inflation, with the increasing prospect of stagflation. Daily tension around whether and how heavily the tariff shoe will drop. McDonald’s CEO reporting lower income customer visits have fallen off a cliff. The income gap spreading wider and digging deeper. The August job numbers and the new BLS data mulligan, reporting the previous March-to-March numbers off by a million jobs. UBS reporting AI revenue and productivity gains, so far, have been “disappointing.” Open AI’s Sam Altman fretting about the state of the AI market using language that sounds suspiciously like dotcom-era “irrational exuberance” redux.
Yikes, what could possibly go right?
To my mind, this is a time when the savvy marketer should be reluctant to be caught out in the storm sans plan or umbrella. That includes recognizing that a good chunk of consumers not feeling much economic love. In these conditions, I’d argue, we start looking for positive and relevant ways to connect brands to the surrounding reality, leveraging the difference we can make.
For sure, we don’t cover eyes and ears and sing la-la-la.
In fairness, not everyone agrees. A CMO I talked with last week thought this was all distractive and secondary to the main mission. Where I saw a critical door into a connection, they saw a pedestrian downer.
Time will tell and we shall see.
Anyway, and apropos none of the above, it already feels like fall in New York. There's crispness in the morning and evening air, a few ambitious souls in the plant kingdom are already gracing us with dashes of color, the hordes of sidewalk amateurs are blessedly RTO or back to school.
From a summer in the country, it’s great to be back on the asphalt. I just wish I hadn’t brought a gut full of unease with me on the train back to town.
