How 2024’s word of the year sums up the new marketing challenge

It’s telling that Oxford University Press should choose ‘brain rot’ as its word of the year for 2024.

Although we would argue it’s two words, the term relates to the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality digital and social media content and was selected after 37,000 voters were polled globally.

“Brain rot speaks to the perceived dangers of virtual life,” says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages.

It also demonstrates the challenges that businesses face – and will increasingly experience – in getting their messages heard by audiences who have begun to push back against much of the material filling their laptop browsers and smart phone screens.

It may be early days yet, but, bearing all this in mind, we’d like to suggest a few words that the University Press might consider for 2025’s shortlist … such as strategy, empathy and creativity.

We predict that the businesses likely to achieve the greatest marketing success in the coming months will not simply be those who make the most noise.

Instead, it will be the companies who take a strategic approach, aligned to their overall business priorities and combining short-term objectives with longer-term brand development, who will achieve the best results.

These businesses will need to develop even greater empathy with their target audiences -understanding how they wish to consume content and what they truly value – and then must embrace creativity to ensure their messaging stand outs and makes a lasting impression.

And they will need the conviction to maintain their marketing focus through what are likely to be challenging times for many as the impact of measures announced in the Autumn Spending Review is felt.

As a strategic marketing agency we are, of course, going to argue that taking this kind of approach is a vital investment.

But our experience, gained from more than 15 years of helping clients to grow, is supported by a ton of research, from heavyweights like McKinsey and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, which shows:

• Companies who continue to invest in marketing during difficult periods achieve higher profitability in the long term.
• When brands stop marketing, sales typically fall 16% in the first year and 25% in year two and it can take up to five years to recover from just a 12-month cut to marketing budgets.

Businesses should, however, ensure that the ROI of their marketing spend is carefully monitored.

In 2024, Purpose Media helped clients bring in hundreds of thousands of pounds of revenue, including generating £750,000 of orders for a customer in the home improvement sector – with a return which was more than ten times their investment.

We also helped businesses build and leverage the power of their brands to ensure they are well placed for long-term, sustainable success.

So, with all things considered, perhaps the academics of Oxford should consider value as their word for 2025. It’s already the most important term in Purpose Media’s vocabulary.