2025: In & Out

Our predictions and wishful thinking for the year ahead

Happy New Year, everyone. Hope you’re all suitably celebrated and ready-ish for 2025.

This year, you’ll find us deep in late-night therapy sessions with AI, getting stuck in at women’s sports bars and channelling creative admiration as fuel. What you won’t find? Claims of being “post-purpose” or crafting hot takes just for the sake of it (least of all on LinkedIn).

This list is part oracle musings, part wishful thinking, part tongue-in-cheek. Tell us what you’re anticipating in the comments. And remember over-explaining is out.

In

• AI as your co-writer (not ghostwriter)

• AI as your therapist

• Narrative ecosystems

• Contextual sidebars

• Ambient inspiration (leaving books open)

• Microdosing for the C-Suite

• Electrolytes

• Internet extracurriculars

• Crush culture (creative/ professional admiration as fuel)

• Shower thoughts industrial complex

• Sandwiches

• Being delighted

• Whimsy metrics (measuring joy, not just performance)

• Perpetual beta (everything is evolving)

• ‘I made you coffee’ as love language

• Having a branded taste

• Generational cross-pollination (pairing Gen Z and Boomers for insights)

• Women’s sports bars

• Tough love

Out

• Overthinking

• Overexplaining

• Overearnestness (esp in mission statements)

• Announcing social media breaks (see also: overexplaining)

• Google and googling things

• Dogs

• Saying you are ‘post-purpose’

• Gatekeeping

• Substacks pontificating about Substack

• Social media psychology

• MBAs

• Hot takes

• The em dash—clumsy chatgpt giveaway

• ‘We want to go viral’

• Fear of cringe

• Food and make-up photoshoots (see doughnuts, also out)

• Content about content about content about content

• Idea hoarding – share early, often

• Martinis

• LinkedIn (we can dream right?)

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The Vortex

“The fun of businesses behaving unbusinesslike is fading. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. It’s all too easy to make noise without adding value, and consumers need space, now more than ever. It’s time for brands—not just for the sanity of their social media managers, but for their success—to take a step back.” Red Antler’s State of Brand in 2025 report is a breath of fresh air, and hope.

“Instead of trying harder, try softer”. We love this list of advice from the New York Times.

While we’re looking in the crystal ball, this is what astrology has planned for you in 2025.

And Year Compass is a free booklet for reflecting on the past year and planning what’s next.