If 2024 was the year ‘community’ became a marketing buzzword, 2025 was the year brands realized they had to genuinely build one. It’s why marketers moved past hype-chasing — whether through micro-trends or mimicking internet speak — and recognized that reach without resonance was ultimately a dead end.
This meant that, instead of trying to appeal to as many people as possible on a FYP, brands invested in finding people who would genuinely connect with the brand. This shift cultivated a marketing landscape shaped by craft, shock, escapism, gatekeeping and a growing refusal from consumers to be treated like passive endpoints in a funnel.
From Diesel casting rooftop climbers in viral campaigns, to Elf dropping SPF to solo sailor Oliver Widger in the middle of the ocean, luxury houses and mass brands alike spent the year rethinking how they show up and who speaks for them.
Here, Vogue Business breaks down the biggest shifts that defined marketing in 2025.
Craft became the new flex
This year, as prices spiked and consumers grew more discerning on the value of goods, craftsmanship emerged as fashion’s most valuable currency. Archrival data produced exclusively for Vogue Business revealed that only 54% of Gen Z describe luxury brands as “desirable”, while just 29% is willing to pay more for a luxury label. The industry is under mounting pressure to justify its price tags with clearer proof of value.
Bottega Veneta leaned in with its Craft Is Our Language campaign (the first under creative director Louise Trotter), highlighting the hands of artisans and collaborators. Loewe, too, marked the 10-year anniversary of its Puzzle bag with global events from London to Dubai, where artisans demonstrated the making of the bag IRL. Others, like Miista, thrived in fashion’s most punishing era by doubling down on the value of craft, sharing behind-the-scenes reels tracing a shoe’s journey from sketch to finished product, and spotlighting artisans in their factories.
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“Consumers no longer blindly accept premium pricing without proof,” says Emilie Bruyere, founder of creative agency Dusc Studio, which has worked on campaigns with Burberry, Marc Jacobs and Audemars Piguet. “In a time of economic pressure, AI fatigue and deep mistrust of brands and influencer marketing, people crave tangibility and credibility that align with pricing.” Today’s shoppers research obsessively, cross-referencing social platforms, reviews and comment sections, and even use AI tools to summarize brand values or compare products before they hit buy, she adds. “This is why craft has resurfaced as such a powerful storytelling tool,” Bruyere says. “It explains the price. It educates the customer. It reminds people that certain products take time, expertise and human hands.”
Not doing so, she warns, is risky. “If brands aren’t educating about their craftsmanship, they leave an opening for other people to become the educators,” Bruyere says. Viral critiques and quality call-outs from creators, like leather expert Tanner Leatherstein’s popular bag deconstruction series, quickly filled that void this year.
Influencers evolved into taste curators
Speaking of creators, 2025 gave rise to a new creator class, placing Substackers, experts and community event leaders as key brand advocates.
It’s a shift that has reshaped the tone and format of paid content. Take Ayo Ojo, known online as the Fashion Roadman, whose partnership with H&M wasn’t about him wearing the clothes, but analyzing the campaign itself.
Emily Sundberg, founder of business newsletter “Feed Me”, captured the moment in her Substack titled “Need to know what marketing girly pitched this,” noting that the rise of writers like herself, “Link in Bio” founder Rachel Karten and Puck’s Lauren Sherman have created a new class of influence built on analysis and cultural fluency. In response, brands have increasingly partnered with this new creator cohort, whether it’s American Eagle enlisting writers Casey Lewis and Tariro Makoni as guest editors of its recently launched Substack; or Miu Miu hosting Booker Prize-winning author Geetanjali Shree and curator Lou Stoppard as panelists in its growing literary club program.
As influence decouples from follower counts in favor of expertise, social capital has increasingly begun to outweigh online capital. Showing up in the rain on a Tuesday night is harder to fake than engagement metrics, and as culture bends back to analog connection, the ability to convene is becoming the new pinnacle of influence. “A host creates sustainable, in-person belonging,” Andrew Roth, founder of Gen Z insights firm DCDX and co-founder of Offline, told Vogue Business earlier this year. “The host is the next influential archetype because they hold the most valuable thing in culture today: social capital.”
Brands are taking note, embedding themselves in real communities rather than content feeds. Performance brands like On and Hoka continue to see strong returns from grassroots run clubs. Manchester-based label Represent, when launching its performance line 247, sidestepped the traditional sportswear playbook entirely, opting instead to root itself in newer fitness ecosystems like Hyrox.
The return of escapism and the surreal
In an age defined by digital surveillance, economic precarity and political unrest, consumers are turning to escapism as a form of emotional relief. At the same time, years of lo-fi relatability and “just like me” marketing have perhaps reached their limit. Audiences have an appetite for immersive experiences that feel larger than life, rather than those that mirror it.
Beauty brand Elf signaled the shift early by orchestrating a mid-ocean air-drop of SPF and snacks to solo sailor Widger after his expedition challenge on TikTok went viral, a moment engineered to jolt audiences out of scroll hypnosis. Meanwhile, spectacle also re-entered fashion’s center stage. Valentino’s Fall/Winter 2025 show unfolded in a surreal, red-lit “club bathroom”, a set whose heightened artificiality and voyeuristic charge — amplified by models emerging from cubicles as if caught mid-mischief — recalled the theatrical runway productions of fashion’s earlier eras. Burberry’s FW25 show similarly embraced spectacle, featuring a costumed Burberry knight seated front row.
Campaigns also reflected the shift. Diesel pushed the surreal into the visceral in a denim campaign directed by Grant James-Thomas. Here, the brand cast Russian rooftoppers Angela Nikolau and Beerkus, creators known for scaling skyscrapers and dangling from impossible heights. “What Diesel did was surreal, but they proved real people got on a building and did it,” Bruyere says. “And in the age of AI, when anyone can generate a fake version of themselves doing that, the fact that Diesel used actual climbers and showed videos of them scaling the building, ignited [something in] people.” She also points to Saint Laurent’s An Ordinary Day, shot by Martin Parr; On’s Zendaya-as-space-explorer narrative; and Gentle Monster’s hyper-stylized The Hunt starring Hunter Schafer, as examples of cinematic storytelling that resonated with audiences this year.
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Gatekeeping became cool again
After a decade of hyper-transparency when gatekeeping was treated as a social media sin, consumers are increasingly rejecting the idea that everything should be universally accessible or optimized for the FYP. They want to feel they’ve earned their discoveries.
This shift is reshaping how brands communicate. Instead of broadcasting, they’re speaking to smaller, more invested groups. Dior tested this with private Close Friends drops for select creators, sharing mood board images and early handbag designs with fashion critic Hanan Besovic (@IDeserveCouture). Maison Margiela DM’ed fashion commentator Ashantéa Austin her couture show invite, a moment she shared in a reel that drew over 100,000 likes.
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Exclusivity also defined physical events, with many runways operating at a “reduced capacity” this year. Sarah Burton’s Givenchy debut hosted just 300 guests; Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford runway seated 200; and Jonathan Anderson’s Dior menswear debut famously invited far fewer influencers than usual — a decision that sparked Lyas’s now-viral La Watchparty, after sharing his disappointment about not being invited (as he usually is). Meanwhile, Chanel’s Arts Culture magazine, Dries Van Noten’s bookstores and Miu Miu’s IRL book clubs were introduced as cultural ecosystems designed for the few, not the feed.
“It connects to the need for luxury brands to reinstate a semblance of mystery; to claw back a level of exclusivity that counters the demystification we’ve seen in a million behind-the-scenes videos,” Katie Baron, content director at trends intelligence agency Stylus, told Vogue Business earlier this year.
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At the same time, commerce is moving into the shadows. Increasingly, transactions happen in DMs, Discords and private sourcing channels rather than public feeds — a shift marketers are calling “dark retail”. It offers what the algorithm cannot: the feeling of earned discovery and a human touch in a year when Big Tech felt increasingly unstable. Instead, this generation wants to feel they are doing the work of discovery: combing resale platforms, digging through vintage racks, decoding recommendations from niche creators. As Vogue Business senior trends editor Lucy Maguire notes in Gen Z Broke the Marketing Funnel (Part II), social shopping has made the purchase journey seamless, but in doing so, “removed much of its soul”. Exclusive research with Archrival underscores the shift. More than half of Gen Z consults the comments section before purchasing (far higher than those who visit brand profiles) and engagement reflects this behavior: comments on luxury TikTok videos rose 113% year-on-year in June, according to a TikTok report.
Ultimately, the brands that thrived this year forwent chasing algorithms in favor of building trust and connection. In a landscape saturated with slop, substance has never mattered more.
