In a very famous Monty Python sketch, the death of a parrot is described repeatedly and redundantly in several phrases: “The parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It is bereft of life. It is now an ex-parrot.”
Whenever I’m asked about ‘creative effectiveness’, I feel a similar sentiment: isn’t creative effectiveness the same thing? The redundancy in the phrase is often baffling – something that is truly strategically creative will almost always end up being effective with its audience.
Scores of data points have now – effectively – shown that the more creative a brand campaign is, the more chances there are for it to deliver on effectiveness. Take a look at the three top brands at Cannes Lions in 2024: Coca-Cola, Heineken, and Apple. Would those be effective enough?
Read more predictions for 2025 from industry leaders here.
According to Harvard Business Review research, a euro invested in a highly creative campaign will have double the sales impact of a non-creative campaign. The global CFO of McDonald’s was up on stage recently speaking about the financial benefits of the return on creativity.
So when predicting 2025, let’s start there: the value of creativity being increasingly recognised.
Creativity is, and will be, everything
AI is going to become a key driver, not only of brilliant executions at times, but mostly – overwhelmingly mostly – of mediocre content and the ‘same-fication’ of messaging.
In an environment that is constantly going to be affected by machinery making decisions, human creativity is going to be the key ingredient to stand apart, to connect better, to resonate with audiences in the Middle East. While AI will play its role in research, execution and delivery, it will be creativity that will be the real sought after aspect for a brand to truly deliver on its ambition of being noticed.
Opportunistic velocity
We understand that the average attention span is now below 0.0005 seconds and, the way it’s going, will eventually regress into the negative.
Which means that 2025 will see a lot more very speedy messaging takeovers to gain a share of that most valuable real estate in the world: a parking spot in your audience’s brain.
This will require a streamlining of archaic, slow approval processes, which will have to be reformed if a brand is to show up rapidly and effectively to its audience through creativity.
As the Middle East expands at an insanely rapid pace, so will brands need to speed up their get-to-market messaging.
Bowled over by being bold
Consumers respect brands that take bold risks, or take bold stands, and this will be an even more prominent measure in 2025.
Safer approaches will not have the kind of power that a message eliciting a “Woah” from your audience generates. People don’t want to live boring lives, and they certainly don’t want to hear boring messaging.
The bolder a brand can get, the more effectively noticeable it will be. The UAE is the perfect example of this: bold ambitions have translated into incredibly creative outcomes.
Authentic engagement
The ‘BS alarm meter’ is probably at its highest as we go into 2025. To drive a real conversation, brands will need to engage authentically. That means not sounding like you’re speaking from a board room full of people looking at charts.
This is especially important in a country like Saudi Arabia, where the value of an authentic, relevant conversation is paramount. Not being true to what you sound like will be rejected overwhelmingly by consumers in the region.
Emotion-ai-l technology
This is perhaps the biggest talking point of the year, and will continue to be one, so I will return to it. With all that emphasis on AI, there will be greater attention given to the emotional quotient behind the technology – and therefore the choice to put ‘EMOTION’ in caps in the subhead and ‘ai’ in smaller letters. AI will follow emotion, not the other way round. And that’s where humans will be key.
The AI president case for Lebanon is the perfect example of how data collected from human journalists trained a machine to lead a country.
So, an ad person and a client walk into a bar …
Humour will continue to rise in 2025. We have already seen a remarkable turnaround where classic humour and entertainment has made tremendous gains in effectively reaching consumers.
Egypt has always had a strong grip on its comedic creative credentials, which has delivered incredibly well on effectiveness. I feel the rest of the region will catch up with that sentiment of shedding an element of seriousness and embracing more humour to drive entertainment value. Nobody can resist a good laugh.
Experiences are essential
Brand experiences will become more sought after, but not just the regular kind, ones that are truly unexpected and creative; ones that get shared and ones that stay with people for a while.
It’s going to become probably the most effective way to convince a consumer about your messaging: making them feel something at a personal level. 2025 will see a lot more people picking experiences over things, and brands will need to be there to deliver.
I’m looking forward to an exciting 2025. I feel that a lot of advancements in creativity will take place in the region, given the trajectory it has already been on. But most of all, the one big thing that will happen is that we will stop saying ‘creative effectiveness’. Simply saying ‘creative’ will be enough to suggest it.
By Ali Rez, Chief Creative Officer at Impact BBDO.
