[Podcast] The Crystal Ball Episode: What does 2025 Have in Store for You? (With Stacy Dally)

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Ryan

What if I told you I had all the answers from marketing in 2025? Some of you probably pay me $1 million. Well, surprise, surprise. I don't, but some of the guests on season to just might. But buckle up, folks, we're in for a voyage as we jump on the rocket ship. No. One as David Bowie as we visit the timeless masterpiece The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

We've officially crossed the threshold into 2025. Hard to believe that we're here, but we're gonna take some time today. Reflecting just lightly on the past and more importantly, looking forward. I've had this imaginary crystal ball sitting in front of us throughout the filming of season two. Our guests appeared into it. Out of came some pretty interesting responses, but we ourselves had some things we'd like to share with the audience in preparation for 2025.

What is business development? What is strategy look like? What is marketing look like? What does revenue operations look like into 2025? So get ready for an op ed piece on what Lee Page's leaders think about the future. So, Mike, I'd love to start from your chair as an executive, it's more specifically martech. What are you preparing people for and what are you hearing from your peer set?

Michael

Yeah, well, we've come through an interesting time here. At 2023. We saw kind of a reverse in the industry in terms of funding. Right. All of a sudden companies were expected to have margin. And we come out of this very frothy period where you get a lot of kind of junk. Right. Companies that were funded. But I mean, maybe they shouldn't have been 20, 23 was was a correction year and into 2024.

So I think what we're going to start to see in 2025 is those companies that were able to survive and come out of it, they're going to start to become market leaders. Yeah. And they were the ones that that were able to move through this really tough period. And what you usually see out of periods like this are some really strong winners starting to make a dent in the market.

So I think we're going to we're going to see more players and more brand names. And maybe we haven't seen before start to compete with the incumbent brands. And the people that have come into that space for a long time. I think that's much of what we've been preparing for too, is, is knowing that we can't stay stagnant.

We have to keep moving forward. And that's where internally, our 2025 is much about innovation. Yeah. But I think we're going to see it in the market as well. Whereas those winners are going to command a greater market share. By the end of 2025.

Ryan

Yeah. The footsteps are getting louder. Are they not. Right. Like we we talk often at the leadership level about competitors we don't know or see today, likely competing with us in short order. You hear of app development happening in a weekend, product development in a weekend with just a few, you know, intelligent, you know, devs just kind of grinding over it.

So it means time to speed up, to innovate. At a rate maybe we hadn't in some time. So yeah, love that insight, Stace, from your desk, what do you seeing into 2025, in the way of revenue operations and just business as a whole?

Stacy

Yeah. So I think in the last couple of years we've been seeing a lot of data, just data from here, trying to collect as much data as possible. And then last year especially, I think it's like, okay, we have all this data, what's it like? Can we organize it? Like, what are we doing with this. Like let's let's do something.

So I think now we've gone through that, we have the data, we've organized it. Now 2025 is going to be a lot about now someone go do something with it, make it actionable and then having someone own it. So not just here. Team cures all all these reports and all these graphs like Sia in 2026 like know like all right, Ryan, here's this this graph, here's a set of data.

Go change it or whatnot. So it's really having ownership now over the data. I also think it's become even more important, as we said earlier in earlier episodes, that consumer behavior, purchasing behavior is changing so much. And so having that data on it is going to be, even now, more important, because all of our assumptions that we've had are thrown out the door of people are buying more on TikTok, and they're buying more on these other platforms that we don't even know about yet. And so the only thing that really tells us that is data.

Ryan

Yeah. And I think people around your chair is such the distillation of all this mass information, these massive data sets get you down to something actionable, right? I think we all start massive dashboards, of which sometimes go, oh boy. Where do we start? Where do we go from here? So I think your chair, it's that that continued distillation and something I always talk about my with my team is just simplifying the complex.

We're human beings. We still need to build a consuming information quickly and then act upon it accordingly, too. So I think that's a little bit of what you're you're speaking about as well. From my vantage point, we've talked about diversification going places. Others are not, or trying to be there. At least I see the expansion of influencer marketing really taking a step forward.

It's been a hot topic for a few years, and for folks like me who's entertained the thought of it, the barrier to entry to do it well was pretty substantial. Right? To get connected with these these folks that have 500,000 or 1 million subscribers, you'd be surprised if you haven't did your homework, get what it takes to engage in a relationship with these people.

Now, what I'm finding with some advanced discussions with some partners, there's different pathways into influencer marketing. It seems very connected experiences with people of influence. Right. We always want to expedite the sales process. What's the best way of doing so? Finding people that already liked and trusted by a community. Now if I can integrate myself into that conversation, sales and travel, the pay conversion rates all take a step forward in a very meaningful way.

So I think that the marketer today is going to try to find these connected audiences through platforms that offer a community of influencers, as opposed these 1 to 1 relationships, which you look at the car and go, Holy cow, I'm not sure I see my my rate of return here. I think there's a lower barrier to entry for influencer marketing for marketing teams of all sizes.

So I see that as a great extension of this diversification of performance marketing as such. And I'm hopeful that many get to experience that, because I think there's some great resellers of our products and services that some of us are just not benefiting from today. I think most of us are not quite honestly.

Ryan

You know, we've heard a little bit from our guests and we'll have some snippets here throughout this episode, of course, but a lot of the themes still sound a lot like 2024. I this I that right. It's coming fast. It's here to stay. Well yeah no kidding it it is. But its impact is a little bit different on the end user.

And maybe people at the at the leadership level. And Michael, I'd like to just ask you quickly, AI is a different than 2024. Is it is it changing or is it much of the same.

Michael

Well I think in 2024 it was going to run humanity. Right? I think that was the most.

Ryan

Talked about.

Michael

Conversation. Was was this all it was kind of the the end game. And I think people maybe were trying to figure out what is the end game for this. I think what we're hearing now is, look, this is going to accelerate this is obviously relevant to to everything that we do, but we're seeing more specific use cases. So it's less about needing basic income because there's going to be no jobs.

And it's more about how does this augment human work. And I think that's what some of the themes that we've heard from our guests are. I'm starting to use this internally. I don't quite know, but hey, we're saving time. And I think that's where it starts. And I think that's where we begin. 2025 is business is figuring out how do I start to use this?

What is the end of 2025 look like? Well, I mean, Thomas said it's going to accelerate much faster than we think, and we may end up somewhere that we can't imagine today. I think what we've seen is while things move quickly and even the development has moved in increasingly faster year after year, the adoption is always a little bit slower than we anticipate, so I would guess we'd see similar trajectory where maybe the capabilities are going to, to impact us, or be there an outsized way. But the actual use cases and adoption might be a little bit slower than we than we think.

Ryan

Yeah. No, I like that. Stacey. Yeah.

Stacy

I think, 2024 we actually benefit from AI being such a buzzword. Oh my gosh, if we foun a dime every time. Oh this is powered by AI. Really? But because it was so I think hyped and overused, the average person was like, okay, I guess I could start using it wasn't such this. Oh my gosh, what is this? It's more of like everyone's talking about it. Like apparently I'm using it and this, this and this.

Like it became more approachable and maybe more like, oh, I can use it. Oh, I'm already apparently I'm already using it, that sort of thing. So I think now that we've kind of like climbed that hill over of like, okay. Yep. We're doing it now. It's like, all right, now let's actually start to, intentionally use it and like get after it.

Ryan

Yeah, I like it. I'm going to stand on the edge of controversy because I think that's where the marketing is always at its best. But I think that we're, we're, we're, we're seeing a wave of the ethics police coming towards AI at this point in time. We talk about deepfake technology and how it's going to allow us to personalize experiences at scale.

Right? I can train a version of me to talk like me and represent itself in a million different ways. Wild stuff with crazy ramifications, right? Markers like, that's exciting. But we know there are people that are going to weaponize this technology in a way of which it could harm individuals, and it could harm businesses and brands that have had longstanding reputations.

I do see us kind of getting closer to that. Holy cow, what's real? What's fake, right? Where we talk about during the political season, like, oh my goodness, you could have someone saying something that they clearly did not.

Michael

But if you actually saw that, yeah, yeah.

Ryan

And it comes off as like, well that's what he or she said, right. Oh my goodness that they have to have this whole discussion about what was real. It was fake. And we know in a headline world people grab what they see quickly, make a kind of an assumption or decision. That's it. They believe it. That gets to be dangerous and in a variety of ways from your side.

I think how we police ourselves, hopefully we as humans still prove out to do the right things, both to advance our society forward, but also to not harm you know, the great technology that's advanced us. And if we get a little bit further, is just, you know what? It takes the power consumption around the AI sphere.

I mean, every time that we, prompt into GPT, I think I read it's like a a bottle of water. Power is used to generate that outcome. I start doing that at scale. And a lot of us use GPT or AI image generation for funsies, right. Magic to, you know, two, three, 4 or 5, six, seven, ten times.

The impact is now showing up in the way of is it profitable? Can we have server farms really processing this information at scale? You know, an open AI is trying to go for profit, right. And that starts to open up a different, you know, funding in the order, yada yada. But I'm wondering is there like holy cow, it's great usage, but are we able to really for profit?

What this is this is doing for us. So I think ethics and morality is going to find its way to this, but also just basic economics as well. I think we'll start to we have to find a way to profitability. We can't just do what we're doing for free because we're getting away quite a bit right now.

Michael

Right? And tech is really good. It's great at that. But yeah, I think it be nice. Checks and balances. Always a healthy ecosystem. And hopefully it'll start to catch up.

Ryan

That's the thought. Yes, I did do a flip flop. I wanted to reserve the musical influence for today's discussion as well, because we often started season two with, here's the music, and it ends to invent for me the kind of the marking topic. But today it's the choice was so obvious for us, I think. And Michael, you made the selection there, so kudos to you.

But we're staring down the eyes of David Bowie's introduction of Ziggy Stardust and the record I love this: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Maybe I gotta love this. Very futuristic. It seemingly has aged very well, but I want to talk about its application to the discussion. Michael. Maybe some of the things that Bowie saw well before his time had come and maybe its application again. Yeah. Conversation.

Michael

Well, again, like some of the other albums that you'll see in in season two, there's this kind of fear and it's this story about this populist fear of the unknown, and Bowie's kind of vision for how that plays out. And is it theatrical? Absolutely. Is it over the top? Yep. Only Bowie, but but the the kind of theme of the unknown of this entity coming, of humanity as a whole being scared of the uncertain feels very much like the times that we're living in today.

And I think we all want to know, what does the end of 2025 look like? What is the end of 2026? What you know, what do we want to know today that we're going to know tomorrow? And that's that theme, beyond kind of the hero element of it is very prevalent, especially in the the first half of the album.

Ryan

Concrete. What are you saying, Mrs. Claus?

Stacy

Well, I actually read that there is, thoughts to make it a musical.

Ryan

Oh, it would do great.

Stacy

Well, yeah. I mean, as you're tell you know, this the the the fantasy of it, the all of it, I'm like musically nuts.

Ryan

Yeah, it'd be fantastic.

Stacy

But the album in itself though, I think, a standout track, for me was the, I mean, the classic, the Starman.

I mean, I think everyone has heard it. Even I've heard it. And so it's just one of those that you can. Oh, I don't quite know that. You know this song. You just know it. Whether you know the story behind it and all of that and the potential musical. You know the song. Yeah.

Ryan

Yeah, there's a couple that stand up for me. Starman, like you said, it's it's widely known. Suffragette city is the song that's probably most popularly known. It was a pop record amongst a concept record, which I think is always interesting. A lot of these concept projects rarely yield a single that becomes commercially viable. Of course, only Bowie could probably accomplish it.

But yeah, I'm sure there's a great story that I have not fully dissected inside of Suffragette City is how it applies to Ziggy, but I thought that was a record that, you know, we're all very familiar with. I personally love soul love future explorations.

Which I can't hear where it falls on the record, but it has this incredible drum break to open it up. And as a as a hip hop adore, I was like, man, that drum breaks been used. I'm trying to pinpoint where it's been used so many times, because Bowie was always so great at having these really intricate percussion performances that made the rest of the music just jump off of the canvas, you know?

He had a really interesting way of how he played a guitar, but I think it was best aided by the drums in the percussion and and so love for me, it caught my attention and it still does to this day. It's hard not to love just this futuristic voyage that he takes you on as well, right?

It's hard to call attention to a singular track when you see a concept record that is so cohesive front to back. And we've talked about a couple of records today. It's like, Holy cow, this is just, you know, track one through track, whatever. It makes sense together. This is another great example in kind of, for me, a five star, performance across the board.

And it feels today, it feels yesterday, and it maybe feels tomorrow as well, which, I mean, you accomplish those three. What's left to do maybe. And they Bowie feels the same around.

Michael

Yeah. And I think what we're, we're hoping to touch on is kind of this element of hope. And, you know, the hope comes through Ziggy Stardust through like. Right. But how I think we're all looking for that thread. And what does the future look like? Because a lot of the stories that we're hearing are quite bleak. But I don't think the future is as bleak as we may be led to believe.

Ryan

And that is how we will end today's episode.

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