A new American presidency. An untested UK government finding its feet. Global conflict and wildfires decimating Los Angeles. At best 2025 is looking chaotic. And we’re just a few weeks in. 

Meanwhile our clients, from fashion to finance and automotive to pharmaceuticals, are navigating their own specific challenges. From global trade tensions to the actual business impact of AI brands are grappling with big issues. 

To help clients and ourselves stay ahead, we’re doubling down on what we do best; connecting brands with consumers through powerful brand experiences.

2025: Empathy Rules 

Empathy will be everything for experiential creativity in 2025. The next 12 months will see brands offer much needed comfort and human connection in this challenging year. One of many post-COVID lessons is that meaningful, memorable, IRL connections always prevail.

And brands are diving in, seeing the emotional impact a 10-minute live experience has for people versus a 3-second doom scroll. In fact, Event Marketer Magazine reported that 74% of the Fortune 1000 will spend more than ever before on events, live activations and retail experiences in 2025. It’s the ultimate antidote to social media brain rot.  

That said, 2025 will also see us inch nearer to ever-more concrete ways of measuring amplification of brilliant brand experiences. Just look at earned media from recent Squid Game global activations and the ‘local’ Charlotte Tilbury’s Covent Garden launch. The increasingly successful intersection of PR, content and brand experience is propelling brand and product narratives. With the right experiences this integrated approach will help brands maximise the fandom factor. 

Creativity will be increasingly powered by this confluence. A trend which will drive more agency collaboration this year, especially amongst independents. We have an active partnership programme, searching out tech, PR and sponsorship partners to fuel innovative creative solutions. 

Long ideas, not big ones 

In 2025 for brands and agencies alike playing the long game will be a competitive advantage. We’re launching our new creative platform, called ‘The Thread’. It’s a simple tool based on our premise of creating campaigns that areexperience out. Put simply, that means long ideas, when applied across multiple media and touchpoints, drive campaign amplification pre, during and post any IRL experience. The Thread helps clients see the value of experiences as so much more than ‘just’ one-off activations. 

Staying Future Fit 

We believe the most successful agencies this year will be those built for quick creative evolution. The integration of AI into all facets of mainstream business will further propel creative solutions for clients. It gives us the chance to further personalise the work across entire experiential campaigns, pre, during and post an activation. 

We’re also introducing ‘digital twin’ experiences, using tech to create concurrent digital experiences alongside IRL ones. In these experiences the concept stays the same across both experiences, but journeys, narrative and pay-offs are format specific. This approach targets a major client challenge: driving reach, without diluting creativity. 

Regionality and adaptation 

The flip side of that will see brands look beyond one-off experiences to target different regions and demographics with scalable, roadshow-style activations. 

One recent example of this is eBay’s recent parts and accessories activation. The experience literally took the challenge of converting car enthusiasts into experts on the road, popping up at car shows across the country. Adaptability within creativity is crucial to drive this trend. 

Walking the talk

We’re finding new ways to fuel our own creative curiosity in the year ahead. Our ‘OpenTable’ events gather CMOs and experiential leaders together over dinner and drinks for honest, no holds-barred discussions on what’s keeping brand owners awake at night.

Marketing leaders from Nike, Jaguar Land Rover, Brompton Bicycles, Path Entertainment and eBay all pitch in to the discussion. An open approach which gives our guests (and us) vital insights into what creative excellence means to clients across sectors. It’s an exercise in active listening that never ceases to spark inspiration.  

Valuing the Competition 

We’re rigorously auditing the experiential category to spot patterns, mine insights, and map opportunities for clients. This means we are consistently assessing the competition to see who’s setting the benchmark for excellence. Building our creative literacy across the business is hugely beneficial;  we have a quick shorthand for what’s working (and what isn’t), with insights and metrics applied to client briefs. 

Harnessing the Growth Culture

We’re growing at pace. Since the 1st of January alone thirty brilliant individuals have joined our team. We are also planning to expand from the UK, Middle East and South Africa into Asia and the US. 

We’re leveraging that growth to further support our own creativity. We actively encourage our people (across all functions) to spend time in our different offices worldwide, exploring new cultures and creative ways of looking at the world - with one simple condition – they bring back and share their learnings with the wider agency. 

On a local level agency teams are organising their own experiential days, putting themselves in the consumers’ shoes as they spend time together exploring different activations around the country.

It's a small but significant marker for Collaborate: putting ourselves in our clients and our consumers' shoes, enabling empathy to drive creativity.