Key trends for your 2025 marketing strategy

Hello!

Whenever we start working with a new client, one of the first things we ask to see is their audience insights and customer profiles, or “personas”.

Understanding your customers is essential. This information informs every part of your business from your NPD to your marketing, to your UX (user experience). Without knowing your audience’s motivations and pain points, everything you do is just guesswork.

While your customers will be unique to your business, there are global occurrences that create behavioural trends. Looking at trend forecasting is a great way to predict what will resonate with your customers while you plan for the year ahead.

Here’s what I’ve got for you today:

Resource
💁 WGSN 2025 consumer profiles

Strategy
🤔 Using trends to inform your marketing strategy

Studio News
📰 Work in progress

💁 RESOURCE

WGSN 2024 consumer profiles

Leading global trend forecasters, WGSN, has published 4 key consumer profiles for 2025 and it’s well worth a look to help inform your 2025 marketing strategy.

You can read all about the full report here, but here’s a short-hand version:

The New Nihilists
Overwhelmed by the world's problems and with little faith in the powers that be to fix them, this group of consumers are coping by caring less.

They’re independent, creative thinkers who are drawn to alternative concepts. Honesty, authenticity, and humour are the best ways to reach this audience, who resist being “sold to”.

The Reductionists
In a world that has become more digital since the pandemic, they’re looking to re-establish real-life connections and experiences.

While they value convenience, they care deeply about ethical and sustainable practices. Driven by kindness and integrity, this group prioritises “other-care” over self-care. To reach this group, you’ll need to create value-based connections through human-centric storytelling.

The Time Keepers
This group values time and wants to spend theirs doing things that enrich their lives. They’re a quality-over-quantity bunch who are done with social media snippet culture, preferring to dedicate hours to truly gratifying experiences – making food from scratch, reading books, spending a day in nature – whatever it is that fills their cup.

Driven by freedom and flexibility, you can reach this group by offering a service that will give them more time for the things that matter to them, or through products and services that feed their interests.

The Pioneers
These big thinkers are galvanised by new ideas, constantly problem-solving how to improve the world around them. Comfortable in both physical and digital spaces, they’re likely to be early adopters of new tech so long as it serves a greater purpose.

Inspired by clever concepts and smart designs, the way to reach this group is through big-picture thinking. They’re also drawn to anything that creates seamless connections between their physical and digital worlds.

🤔 STRATEGY

Using trends to inform your marketing strategy

What ties these 4 consumer profiles together?

While different in their approaches, when you boil it down, each group is finding a way to counteract their disillusionment with the world around them. Across the board, people are feeling fatigued. War, the pandemic, climate change, inflation, cancel culture, politics – the list goes on, and it’s weighing heavy on your customers.

To connect with any one of these consumer profiles, you have to work out how your brand can help them achieve their primary objective.

• To reach the Nihilists, offer an escape or distraction.

• To reach the Reductionists, offer connection.

• To reach the Time Keepers, offer time or a meaningful way to spend it.

• To reach the Pioneers, offer purpose.

By understanding your audience’s pain points and motivations, you can develop a marketing and communication strategy that resonates, driving not just sales, but long-term loyalty.

📰 STUDIO NEWS

New clients

While we’re on the subject of creating deep connections with your customers, I want to mention a couple of new clients who each have a purpose that their customers can (and do) really get behind.

Wilson & Dorset
Wilson & Dorset offer an avenue to primal living through luxury sheepskin products. We’re helping Wilson & Dorset scale internationally, designing and developing a new custom Shopify store to set them up for success.

Earlier this week, Monica and I had the pleasure of kicking off the project down in Wānaka. With such an incredible setting, we couldn’t help but be inspired – we’ll share some pics of our adventure on Instagram soon.

Abel
For nearly a decade, Abel has been creating some of the world’s best 100% natural perfume without compromising on ethics or aesthetics. With scents that champion nature, they have a less-is-more philosophy.

After initially engaging us for some CRO consulting and code auditing, we’re now designing and developing a new site for them. We can’t wait to unlock their full potential.

If you’d like to talk about CRO and code auditing, ecommerce support or a new website, get in touch by replying to this email.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time.

Alex Murton
Managing Director & Co-Founder
Studio Almond