Marketing in 2025: When Easing Anxiety Becomes A Brand Priority
Learn how brands are shifting from selling to helping strategies in 2025, building trust through transparency, values, and genuine connections with consumers.
Connecting through shared circumstance
Evolving alongside consumer behaviors
Understanding consumer mindsets
Successful companies understand what it takes to influence consumer confidence. They know how to make their product or service appealing, accessible, necessary. Even people who identify as resistant to commercialism could probably name a handful of brands that have worked their way into the fabric of their lives because they represent something meaningful, or simply help get things done.
But in 2025, we’re experiencing a moment when brands are starting to understand they also need to be trustworthy and stand for something. Marketing strategies—most notably in the US—are focusing less on the product and more on transparency, stability, values, empathy, and refuge.
Changing the narrative
This has been said before, but it still applies: these are unprecedented times. Marla Skiko, global head of media and marketing intelligence at Ford, says, “People are on edge in a lot of ways. Everyone is thinking about how they are going to navigate the second half of this year. So companies that think about how they can help [are] well received. It’s just a matter of how they frame that story.”
Companies are thinking about how they can help; what a beautiful response to an uncertain era. As Skiko points out, there’s a story behind that choice to shift from selling strategies to helping strategies. Some brands seem to be catching on to the idea that stories about helping can be a lot more compelling—and advantageous for the company—than stories about selling.
For one, helping stories have the potential to be more genuine, more reflective, and more engaging than selling stories. One-way transactional exchanges are useful and efficient, and we’ll always use them. But a gesture of support or reassurance initiates a relationship rooted in empathy. It’s also a sign that the offer is coming from someone who can relate to what you might be going through.
In light of all this, a few questions to consider: What is your current brand story? How is it speaking to the societal reality we’re living in? How could it be more relevant? How could it better meet the needs of your audience today? What brands are doing this well? How can your brand show others what it’s doing well?
Connecting through shared circumstance
There’s a silver lining to living through challenging times—global economic sea changes being one example. Large-scale divisive forces often resolve into forces that unify. Or rather, those subjected to the fallout of the divisive forces figure out that the most powerful way to counter them is to come together and forge a new path. Some of this path-forging has come in the form of companies choosing to make their products or services more affordable and accessible.
Ford is working to reinforce consumer trust by doubling down on domestic production, which has resulted in a fleet that’s 80% American made. That “From America, For America” slogan isn’t marketing lip service; it is earned, turning Ford’s supply chain footprint into a brand asset. Their messaging hits this claim out of the park:
National pride has become more than an ideological selling point; it’s an identity. We are all Americans, and whether we’re doing the selling or the buying, tariffs are hitting home—the nationwide one we participate in as voters, and the individual ones we work hard to pay for and raise our families in. In Ford’s brand refresh, the car dealership goes from being a place where you’re likely to get upsold to a place where someone might actually help you save some money on a reliable vehicle. So we’re now strangely all on the same team, with players we might not have trusted before.
Even the old urgency ploy—buy now while supplies last!—has some actual basis in reality these days. “Pre-tariff pricing” has become a thing, because new tariffs aren’t affecting vehicles already on the lot, so it actually is a good time to buy before those tariffs take effect. This isn’t lost on Ford or anyone else in the automotive industry. The difference is that, instead of rolling our eyes at fabricated “don’t miss out!” tactics, we feel the urgency too, and see that it’s real.
Evolving alongside consumer behaviors
Speaking on The Current Podcast, DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) CMO Sarah Crockett said her company is responding to this economic moment by treating marketing flexibility as a core creative asset. “That might be focusing more on what those unique value points for DSW as a retailer are,” explains Crocket, “versus focusing on an individual style of shoe.” She talks about “meeting the consumer in their new mindset,” much like they did during COVID, when the shift to remote work environments amped up sales in more comfortable shoes.
Today, instead of focusing on shoe styles, DSW is looking at future seasons with supply chain pressures in mind and planning their sales strategies accordingly. Given that the landscape is constantly changing, the company is working to be more fluid in its approach, identifying unique opportunities and value points that balance the expectation of online ease with the novelty of a more personable in-store experience. Crockett sums it up nicely: “We want to understand how we can highlight that relationship with the consumer meaningfully in this time of uncertainty.”
Understanding consumer mindsets
Understanding those compelling consumer intersection points isn’t easy, especially if your audience segments span multiple generations. Brands that need to be relatable to Boomers as well as the new Gen Alpha kids on the block need to meet those consumers where they are, whether that be in a brick-and-mortar retail space or in a multi-faceted virtual storefront.
The key is to continue to nurture relationships with your consumers. What is of value to your audience in this moment? What are you putting in the literal and virtual box? How are you revising your messaging to speak to people now? For some, this looks like loyalty programs or exclusive VIP incentives. For others, it may be messaging and creative over placements and buys.
Either way, the goal is to connect, to relate, and to generate experiences, even memories, for your consumers that are relevant to their lives. Your customers shouldn’t feel like you operate in a vacuum. And if this means setting up an actual shop because Gen Z wants to try on their shoes before buying them, it’s time to make that happen. You may not have expected a 21st-century “diminishment in digital efficacy,” as Crockett put it, but companies need to be nimble enough to respond to the market as it evolves despite their best laid plans.
Meeting the moment
None of us are immune to global affairs. As much as we are drawn to or repelled by how our country represents itself as a player in international diplomacy, as citizens, we are subject to it just the same. This predicament inspires us to ask ourselves what we stand for, why it matters, and how we can truly put those beliefs to use.
“With new tariffs looming and economic uncertainty rising, brands across industries are rethinking how they show up, what they say and which channels they use,” claims Ilyse Liffreing in a May 2025 article in the Current. “Much like the early pandemic days of 2020, marketers are moving fast to reassure anxious consumers while aligning brand values with national sentiment.”
As marketers, we have a lot of powerful tools at our disposal, and we have the choice to use these tools in ways that deliberately address the current commercial climate. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has grown out of consumers placing the onus on companies to be clear about their values and to exhibit how they’re actively making a positive impact in their communities. What does your CSR look like? What is of value in this social, economic, and political landscape? How does what we do help, advance, promote, resist, innovate?
Asking these questions can feel risky. For one, they might reveal fractures in brand mission—the ever important “why” of your “what.” These questions might also force stance-taking where you took none before. They can force us to reconsider our audience and what sort of messaging might alienate one segment or another. Not seriously addressing these questions, however, is much riskier.
Many companies are taking the transparency tack, adopting no-frills messaging that aims to connect directly to how people are feeling instead of what they want. The emotional appeal may not land for everyone, but when it does, it resonates. “Couple [transparency and sentiment] with agility,” says Liffreing, “and brands can have a solid tariff strategy.”
Future-proofing your brand
A wise old ad salesman once said, “Intersect with your consumers’ path, never interrupt it.” Interruptions tend to breed negativity, or are at least temporarily annoying. And a few seconds of feeling annoyed can derail even those who show up motivated to buy. Employing a marketing omni-strategy with a mix of channels increases the likelihood that you’ll place your brand in front of the people who will take to it when they need it.
Today, audience behavior propels marketing, perhaps more so than ever before. With your audience in the driver’s seat, merge into their lane with digital direct mail, streaming audio and TV, social influencers, digital ad campaigns, value-added in-store experiences…whichever quantitative or qualitative intersection opportunities make the most sense for your brand. Our brave new multi-channel world is about accessibility, ease, and enjoyability. What keeps that world spinning is our ability to enhance the journey our customers are already on, while reassuring them they’re on the right course.
The most fun part is when those seller-buyer relationships you build start to give back. People appreciate being seen, heard, and spoken to. So much so that they let you know. Introducing you to their friends and family is the natural next step in the relationship. From these customers, you’ll get honest feedback and genuine testimony, securing the connection further. Keep repeating this positive exchange and you end up with stories both parties like to tell.
And there you have it: a shared experience about something meaningful between people living together in the same world at the same time. You almost forget we all started out as detached sellers and buyers.
It’s this comforting, collective, positive reinforcement loop that’ll get us through the rough stuff—and I’d be willing to bet that wise old ad salesman would agree.
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