TLDR MARKETING 2025-10-16

2025 DELOITTE HOLIDAY RETAIL SURVEY

Shoppers are approaching the 2025 holiday season with tighter budgets and growing economic concerns. Average spending is expected to fall 10% to $1,595. About 77% of consumers expect higher prices, and 57% anticipate a weaker economy, pushing many to focus on deals and value-driven purchases. Younger shoppers, especially Gen Z, are more likely to seek deals (95%), and are turning to influencers and social media (74%) and AI (43%) for product discovery. Retailers that combine discounts, quality, and personalized digital experiences powered by AI are best positioned to capture attention and loyalty this season.

GROCERY PRICES KEEP RISING. FRUSTRATED CONSUMERS ARE TRYING TO ADAPT

Grocery prices are rising sharply, with coffee up 21% and ground beef up 13% over the past year. Consumers are buying smaller packages, shopping at cheaper or ethnic markets, and cooking at home more. Despite reduced store visits, most continue shopping weekly and adapting creatively to manage costs.

EXPERIENTIAL TREND OF THE WEEK: HOTLINES

This year, hotlines are reemerging as a new tool in experiential marketing. Canva invited fans to leave feedback through rotary phones, while Disney and Doritos launched story-driven hotlines tied to major entertainment properties. Biosil added a direct-to-consumer element through celebrity-recorded responses tied to product benefits. These campaigns leveraged customer curiosity and nostalgia while offering them a new and different way to connect with brand narratives.

HOW TOP CREATORS USE SIGNATURE FORMATS

Top-performing creators in 2025 use signature formats that make their content instantly recognizable. This strategy drives faster audience growth, builds authority, and sustains consistency. From SEO carousels to visual templates, high-growth creators are anchoring their strategy around repeatable and actionable content structures. The RARE (Recognizable, Actionable, Repeatable, and Engaging) framework provides a simple roadmap to build a format that can become a content trademark.

NEW DATA STUDY: WHAT QUERIES IS CHATGPT USING BEHIND THE SCENES?

ChatGPT performs searches to ground its responses about 31% of the time, averaging 2.17 searches per prompt and 5.48 words per query. Its queries are 61% longer than typical Google searches, with 77% containing 5 or more words. ChatGPT's search use varies by industry, peaking at 59% for local queries and dropping to 18% for credit card content. Jobs and software topics trigger the highest number of searches per prompt, averaging nearly 3 and 2.68 respectively. The most common terms in ChatGPT's fan-out queries include “reviews,” “2025,” “features,” and “comparison,” suggesting that optimizing for these keywords may improve visibility in AI-driven search.

SCREEN STUDIO

Screen Studio is a macOS-exclusive screen recording tool designed to help users create videos. It automates editing tasks such as zooming in on the cursor, smoothing cursor movements, and adjusting video styles, enabling users to produce engaging content quickly. The application supports recording system audio, webcam input, and iOS devices, making it suitable for tutorials, demos, and social media posts.

DEATH OF THE CREATOR

Social media has moved from follower-based networks to algorithm-driven “recommendation media”, and is now entering a third phase powered by gen AI. In this new stage, platforms will create personalized content on demand, reducing their reliance on human creators. While people will still make things, incentives will shift toward unique, human-only experiences like live events and communities. Platforms may reward creators for feeding models rather than reaching audiences.

THE CROCODILE MOUTH, THE DEATH OF NUM=100 & HOW TO CUT THROUGH THE CHAOS

The "Crocodile Mouth" refers to the growing gap between impressions and clicks in Google Search Console that surfaced in early 2025. Brands saw impressions rise sharply while clicks stayed flat or declined. The cause was twofold. First, AI Overviews and zero-click search behaviors kept users on the search page. Second, the num=100 parameter, which previously allowed tools to track 100 search results per query, inflated impression data. Cutting through all the noise requires aligning content with how search is functioning now. This includes visibility within AI surfaces, clarity in structure, and a pivot toward transactional queries that still convert.

CAN AI REPLACE A CMO FOR CASH-STRAPPED STARTUPS?

REPOST YOUR OVERPERFORMING CONTENT

Stanford's 2020 Nobel clip jumped from 100K to 3M views after it was reposted in 2025.

ABANDONED CART VS. ABANDONED CHECKOUT FLOWS

Abandoned cart flows need inspiration or reassurance, while checkout flows need urgency or support.

HOW TO WIN IN SEO AND AEO

The “3S” content framework covers sales, success, and support.