In introducing our latest content marketing research, CMI’s Stephanie Stahl wrote:
“While many [companies] find themselves simply treading water, a group of top performers has found a way to surge ahead. They’ve figured out how to understand their audience’s needs, produce high-quality content, and use AI to create more efficient workflows.”
I say “yes, and…” through the lens of our training, consulting, and advisory work with 20+ successful brands over the last year.
B2B marketing has had an interesting year. While it’s become more strategic and focused on the long term, the short-term playbook has been shredded. One research report recently quoted a CMO saying, “The traditional B2B playbook that worked for so many years isn’t working anymore to grow and capture demand.
Over the last two years, I’ve seen at least three significant disruptions that indicate where content and marketing may be headed. Identifying the implications of these disruptions may help you plan for the future of content and marketing.
Disruption 1: Customer media consumption and the importance of brand
Wow, that sounds important, doesn’t it? It’s just a fancy way of saying things are moving faster, people have more choice in content, and trust in branded experiences plays a bigger role in generating demand and creating loyalty.
Now, you’re no doubt familiar with the shift in how people consume and spend time with content. I shared some of these points in a recent news video and article:
But don’t make the mistake of assuming these statistics mean short, provocative social videos purely focused on grabbing attention are the only content that resonates.
People’s attention spans haven’t decreased — their patience for value has. If you can hold customers’ attention by delivering value quickly, you have the opportunity to create a differentiating experience.
This trend also indicates decreasing patience with anything that interrupts the flow of engagement. For example, a recent study found that people answer barely half of unidentified calls on their mobile phones.
Not only do people dislike interruptions, but they also know they can easily replace any content. Don’t like that TikTok video? Swipe up. Don’t like that Netflix show? Exit right out of it and into something else. Don’t get the sources you need within seconds of that search? Ask AI for the answer.
The brand impact from this disruption fascinates me. That lack of patience and the ease of acquiring replacement content removes some of the ability (and, some might say, the need) to build a brand legacy.
In 1958, the average life span of a company on the Standard & Poor’s index was 67 years. Sixty years later, it had fallen to less than 15 years.
Product and service brands are evolving to resemble startups, fashion, or media. Brands launch, gain recognition, earn audience trust, and then fall out of favor, wear out their welcome, or get replaced by something new.
Ironically, the push to be present across multiple content platforms has led some brands to adopt a more minimalistic approach to corporate branding — in what many now call “blanding.”
Interestingly, successful companies are pivoting toward launching or acquiring content brands and using them like shiny media attractors.
These specific, branded experiences are designed to do the heavy lifting in the short term, capitalizing on the short lifespan of brands in general. These content brands aim to create immediate trust and deep engagement, but they can be discarded if they fail to achieve their goals or fall out of fashion.
For example, fast food maker Chick-fil-A recently launched a new streaming service. But, it’s not so much a streaming service as an effort to create new shows (i.e., content brands) that could be distributed through any number of digital platforms.
That gets to the second disruption.
Disruption 2: Scarcity of physical presence
One thing everyone’s realized is how precious physical presence is. There’s nothing like something being taken away to make you realize how much you value it.
The rapid growth of remote, freelance, and fractional work has reshaped our cultural mindset. People have developed a strong preference for maintaining physical separation. And that makes in-person connections feel more special and rarer.
In simple terms, people now value their personal spaces and surroundings more than before.
More people think, “I’ve come to value working from home,” or “Is my physical presence at my job site worth more than before the pandemic?”
We also ask more critically whether we need to be somewhere in person because we’d much rather be someplace else physically. The saying “work is where the WiFi is” is still prevalent.
Some companies have demanded that employees return to offices. And attendance at events (business and otherwise) has surged.
However, the nature and quality of those events have changed to meet the higher demands of those attending.
As physical presence remains more precious, in-person events (still among the most effective content marketing tactics) have become luxury items. So the nature of the content at these events had better be really good.
Perhaps less obviously, this trend also puts renewed pressure on digital content experiences. Why? Because digital content platforms must also act as proxies for physical presence.
All digital content (events, thought leadership, etc.) must be differentiated because audiences expect more, and the content noise is getting exponentially crazier.
B2B company Salesforce’s investment in launching Salesblazer shows this trend in action. Years ago, Salesblazer might have launched as a blog covering sales news and trends.
But this award-winning project is a resource center, a blog, an education platform, and a community. It markets itself as the “largest and most successful community for sales.”
And that brings us to the third disruption.
Disruption 3: Decline of trust and truth
As we approach elections in the United States, the world feels more divided than ever. Trust in mainstream media is at its lowest level ever. Whether from government, businesses, or nonprofit organizations, an epidemic of misinformation has led to widespread mistrust of institutions and their leaders. Generative AI exacerbates this decline of trust.
When the bar is so low, marketers have an opportunity (and perhaps a responsibility) to use content to build trust as a differentiation.
Great marketing adds value that customers invest in and can create wealth for the business. However, not all customer investment involves a purchase.
You can monetize marketing in different ways — through time, attention, referrals, personal data, brand loyalty, and even trust. All of this can be converted into wealth for the business.
Content and Marketing in 2025
Put these three disruptions into context, and you can start to see patterns for a future of marketing — if not the future of marketing.
The future of content and marketing is:
- The creation of trust and truth
- Differentiated digital and physical content experiences that respect audiences’ heightened expectation
- Quick value delivery without interruptive communication that considers audiences’ willingness to seek value in alternative forms of media
Content and marketing are evolving again. Both content strategy and marketing as a practice have the opportunity to become more valuable and enriching to the business — if we can get out of our way.
What if the outputs of content and marketing were treated as if they were as important as the brand’s products and services?
Would you spend the bulk of your time tweaking things to create the most efficient process without regard to the quality of the output?
What if brands saw marketing as more than an expense line that develops activities and creates content to persuade audiences to become customers?
What if brands treated marketing as a function that enhances the entire customer journey, where the primary function is creating experiences for audiences that could be monetized in multiple ways (only one of which is purchasing products and services)?
Put even more simply, what if adding value, monetizing audiences, and treating content as important as the brands’ products is the future of marketing?
Fifty years ago, Dennis Gabor, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, wrote in Inventing the Future:
“Rational thinking, even assisted by any conceivable electronic computers, cannot predict the future … All it can do is map out the probability … Technological and social inventions are broadening this probability all the time …. The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”
In 2025, great marketing won’t be invented with a prompt. It will be invented by us.
It’s your story. Tell it well.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute