Boost Your Brand Storytelling Strategy in 2025

In the ever-evolving marketing and communications landscape, brand storytelling remains critical for organizations to connect with their audiences, differentiate themselves in the market, and drive business results. We asked leaders across the agency to share their thoughts on how to harness the power of brand storytelling in 2025:

Influencer Marketing
The modern social landscape has proven time and time again that influencers hold enormous weight in connecting brands with their target audiences. Historically, brands have focused on partnering with mega/celebrity influencers with the largest number of followers, but Kim Foster (VP-Channels) predicts that 2025 will see the rise of micro-influencers (5k-30k followers) and nano influencers (under 5k followers).  

“While Padilla already sees the value in working with micro/nano influencers and educating our clients around the value of quality over quantity, this trend will only continue to grow. Micro/nano influencers have more personal connections with their audience, leading to more authentic engagement.

We’ll also see a shift toward more long-term influencer partnerships. Instead of one-off activations, brands are finding that it’s more beneficial to create long-term partnerships that allow influencers to truly adopt a product and seamlessly integrate it into their content.  

We’re also keeping an eye on LinkedIn, which is becoming an increasingly popular platform for leveraging influencers. Already an ideal platform for B2B marketing, it’s a great place for brands to reach more niche and professional audiences. Since LinkedIn is less saturated with influencer content, these activations are more likely to stand out. Less competition can lead to more visibility; however, as more brands take advantage of this trend, leveraging the right influencers who connect with your audience and can deliver credible, authentic content will be the ones to drive engagement.”

Sustainability
The incoming administration will likely roll back some regulatory requirements, but Tina Charpentier (EVP-Client Experience) anticipates that many companies will hold fast to their environmental commitments because they’ve already made the investments and understand that it’s a long-term play. She expects to see more efforts in 2025 to advance decarbonization, which is an opportunity for thought leaders and brand storytellers across multiple industries.

“Despite economic uncertainty, geopolitical disruption and an evolving regulatory environment, we think more organizations will announce carbon neutrality commitments, and we’ll see more innovations introduced to help companies work toward these commitments.”  

She also anticipates that companies who have fallen short of commitments they set to achieve by the milestone year of 2025 will need to reconcile progress against missed targets and determine what’s next. That requires navigating their sustainability communications, deciding how to tell investors, customers and other stakeholders that they missed the mark, and what they plan to do to reset their commitment.

Travel + Hospitality
The “destination dupes” trend emerged in 2024, and Candice Eley (Sr. Director-Channels) expects that it will continue into the new year. “Maybe you’ve always wanted to go to Rome but don’t want to deal with the crowds, the high price tag, or the jet lag. Smaller destinations, hotels and attractions are eager to grab these types of travelers by showcasing how they can offer a similar experience.  

We’ll also continue to see the rise in one-stop shopping. As services and offerings provided by hospitality businesses continue to blur (think Airbnb shifting focus to experiences), we’re seeing a resurgence in cruises and all-inclusive resorts.

Marketers across the travel, tourism and hospitality space will also need to employ authentic storytelling to attract visitors and drive impact for their destination marketing and promotion campaigns.”  

B2B
Danielle Engholm (SVP-Technology) shares that crafting a compelling brand story is essential for success in 2025.  

“Many B2B brands come to us to help them uncover stories around the innovative work they’re doing today. We’re helping them take it a step further by communicating what they’re doing today and capturing their differentiation and perspective on where the industry is headed. Helping B2B brands create a message framework begins with an assessment of how others are positioning their offerings or appearing in the market. Uncovering their brand differentiation and gathering industry insights results in content that can be used in all sales and communications activities. If it’s not already part of your 2025 plan, earmark time and resources for communications coaching to support company leaders and spokespeople to help them become more effective and engaging storytellers.”

Rebecca Pocock (VP-SHIFT) adds that “successful thought leadership requires strong, differentiated, bold and inspiring opinions. Sometimes, we need to push back and dig deeper with executives to uncover engaging (yet authentic) POVs that help their brand stand out in a sea of sameness. We have been auditing thought leadership content within the company’s target media to identify trending topics and whitespace and demonstrate which thought leadership makes the cut and why.”  

To learn more about our 2025 marketing and communications forecasts, contact us.

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