It’s been an exciting year at Tangible, but our sights remain firmly fixed on the future. So, rather than tell you about all of the wonderful things that we did this year (and there were many), we tapped a few members of our team to share some of the things that they hope to see more of in 2025.
Dan Marshall, Creative Director, Copy:
One of my heroes is humanitarian and spiritual leader Amma, who points out that we often assign more value and potential to people and things than they have, only to wind up disappointed and overcorrecting. Amma uses an analogy to explain this point: “We first look at a cow and proclaim, ‘It’s an elephant!’ and later, when the cow disappoints us, we say, ‘It’s just a frog.’ But in fact, it was always a cow.” Instead, Amma encourages people to see things as they are.
I’d like to see a similar approach to generative AI in 2025 for society in general, and especially for creative services and product marketing/design. Let’s stay curious about what gen AI has to offer while remaining clear-eyed about where it still has a long way to go. From my own experience in 2024 (and being fully cognizant that the technology is advancing fast), I see gen AI as much more useful in reacting to content than in creating content. But even in reacting to content, we’re finding almost endless use cases for our work here at Tangible. We can’t wait to showcase some of these in 2025!
Dottie Hodges, Senior Director, Strategic Growth:
I’d like to see more of the world emulating the beloved children’s classic Frog and Toad. The moral of the tale is that even when two creatures are very different, they support one another through caring and kindness. This lens, of course, applies to all humankind in all its wonderful diversity.
In business, I would love to see more Frog and Toad behaviors among enterprise marketing, sales, and product. So often, the work we do is driven by one or the other, but ideally, these worlds complement and drive one another. I’d like to see executive leaders driving a vision where all three play a key role in concert–just like Frog and Toad.
Adrian Rojas Elliot, Senior Copywriter:
I’m looking forward to customer experiences that are more assertive, bold, groundbreaking, and—dare I say—edgy. Some of the most effective marketing messages are ones that the boardroom might find risky, but I’ve observed some B2Cs leaning into more empowered versions of their brands, and I hope to see more of it. The most effective brands are the ones that are unabashedly themselves, and that confidence is compelling to consumers across industries.
Margo Rowder, Senior Copywriter:
I would love to see more and continued openness to Figma! The efficiencies we gain when using it with our clients are massive–not to mention, we squash any risk of miscommunication along the way.
I also believe we can encourage more A/B testing of creative work (where it makes sense). Over the long term, our understanding of what resonates with customers will accumulate from that practice. And in the short term, in at least some areas like social ads, our teams can be more nimble and refocus a media buy on what’s working better.
James Young, Founder and Creative Chairman:
Given the continued mass consolidation of holding companies that own all the large agencies, I would like to see more brands seek small agencies that specialize in different elements of the creative journey. Small agencies have the unique ability to dive deep in a way that the big guys can’t. Independent and minority-owned is the way to go. It’s healthy for intentional creativity, healthy for our economy, and healthy for a brand’s bottom line.
Sarah Buckler, Chief Executive Officer:
There are so many big things on the horizon in 2025 but there are two things I really want as we head there.
First, I want to work with our clients and potential clients to understand where gen AI can be most impactful in their workflows in order to prioritize time-to-value. Instead of boiling the ocean of what gen AI can do, or buying the latest hot, proprietary tool out there, I want to go back to our roots and let the user journey help guide us in where to start, where to go next, and where to ultimately land so that we can quickly understand where we can extract most value from it for the bottom line today.
And second, I want more female leaders lifting up other female leaders of all levels, skills, industries, and beyond. As we enter what feels to many like an uncertain year, I want us to link arms and remind ourselves to, “Wake up and be your own hype person,” (attribution unknown) and then…to go be that to someone else. The world will be better for it.
Here’s to hoping that our team is clairvoyant! See you in the New Year–and drop us a line if we can bring some of these ideas to fruition together: [email protected].
