2025 Marketing: How AI and Political Influence Will Shape Strategy

In this episode of the FreeDive podcast, Kristy and Bill dive into the politics of marketing and share their bold predictions for 2025. From the growing influence of AI on content creation and marketing strategy to the evolving roles of influencer marketing and cancel culture, they explore how cultural shifts and technological advancements are shaping the industry’s future.

Plus, the team delivers plenty of laughs with some of the quirkiest moments yet:

• The wild internet saga of Peanut the squirrel and its unexpected political fallout
• Which team member could secretly crush a breakdancing contest
• Why staying ahead of cultural trends is both exhausting and essential

Tune in for a mix of cutting-edge insights and hilarious detours as Kristy and Bill discuss the ever-changing landscape of marketing and culture in 2025.

AI Tools:

• Chat GPT
• Hedra
• Oasis
• Kapwing
• Underload
• Descript
• Dream Machine
• Notebook LM
• Squadcast
• Pictory

Cultural Mentions:

• Nutterbutter Ad
• Dunkin Donuts Halloween Ads
• Peanut the Squirrel
• Raygun
• Jeremy Swayman

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Chapters

• 0:27 Bill Grew a Beard
• 2:23 How the Election Affects Ads
• 8:12 Marketing Changes in 2025
• 9:32 Fads and Trends in AI
• 13:32 AI Tools for Everything
• 14:39 Multimedia Production and AI
• 17:01 Nutterbutter and Dunkin Donuts Marketing
• 17:56 Peanut the Squirrel
• 24:04 Raygun and Cultural Moments
• 26:06 Our Office's Best Breakdancers
• 27:26 Influencers in 2025
• 29:08 Cancel Culture
• 32:48 Jeremy Swayman Tok
• 33:46 Rage Bait

Transcript

welcome to the free dive podcast I'm Bill Cutrer and I am here today with Kristy Billingslea who is actually really like the person on the podcast I am just sitting in with Kristy today happy to have you here with me thanks thanks for letting me do the intro I think you know people like it when you're here the analytics are better so thank you for being here this is my first podcast with a beard yes it is yeah okay in the comments like what do you think of the beard because this is the farthest honestly I've ever in my adult life has ever gotten with a beard does that imply that as a teenager you were able to grow a bigger beard well or child I know but I probably should have grown a creepy mustache when I was 17 I see yeah I never did um really miss opportunity but yeah for those who it's not too late yeah for those of you who are on the video you might be able to see it I'd like to tell me that I look old so you know my wife will be happy and I'll shave it off and if you're just listening to this audit auditorally girl maybe you got a little beard scratching in the microphone right there you can feel it instead you can feel the fuzziness of my beard it's it's actually still on the the the um kind of the sharp Pokey hairs and I'm still not used to it as far as like rubbing my chin and feeling kind of something scratchy as a person who has never grown a beard I can't relate to any of this but you've grown a mustache a little bit maybe a little bit so yeah try not to promote that HR department is calling me right now I just feel like the HR department T twitching right now so what are we talking about got two things to talk about today we're we're going to make a split episode here okay first thing I think is topical is let's talk about 2025 yes let's um we are filming this on Monday mhm the day before the election yes so you know the world may end tomorrow right and you know half the people are going to be upset yes half the people are not going to be upset yes it's going to be divisive as usual yeah you know that every four years feel like it just will get more and more divisive yeah it's going to get more and more divisive but you know what I you know what as a marketer I love about the election ending what's that my display ads can go back to a normal price oh oh explain that well you think about it ads are an auction environment right yeah so the idea is if there's a lot of money flowing into advertising that you know for our little clients and not so little clients but like the cost per click or they cost per thousand Impressions um you know if if there's a lot more demand for that ad space it's going to be a lot more expensive so it's interesting in some markets you know you can see like a 50 15 20% increase in your costs um for your uh for the in same inventory that you'll see after after the election I would have never even thought of that I'm learning something yeah and it's really interesting too because like you think about the cycle is you're going to go from a cycle of you know as far as demand for ad spend um and inventory both on YouTube the Google Display Network social ads it's a really fascinating cycle for the elections right so you might get it a little bit more like with regional elections in the other two years so like there might be a senate race in two years that like in your state will spend a lot of money but like the election cycle for the presidency is definitely your biggest um push and it really depends what state you're in so again if if we're trying to Market something in one of those Battleground States you know there's millions and million dollars of just being pumped into there so it it's just going to make our ads more expensive harder to show harder to get the right audiences that we want um and what makes it really weird and difficult is you think about this period of time is AD costs go up and then they're going to drop after tomorrow after tomorrow they're going to drop but then you really only have a window of about two to three weeks and then um holiday shopping so be to see consumer um those types of ads especially for anything that's impacted as far as needing a um strong holiday season it's going to go back up so it's it's really unfortunately like a short reprieve um of just a few weeks of kind of seeing a stabilization of AD prices is there anything besides politics and holidays that highly affect you know those are those are really your two biggest and again it it depends on you know like what Market you're in again if you're B Toc or B Tob you know there's other times like B2B seesar will slow down in December because you know people aren't making decisions um I think right now um especially in our industry um so you know marketing um people with other um business Professional Services uh I think right now is a a time period where they're particularly active because we're coming up on the new year and right now is when everyone's finalizing their budgets um or are completing their finalizations of their budgets for the 2025 year here MH and so I think you know those types of companies are you know B2B are also making a big push to get right in front of like but that's a lot more like specific audiences versus like a broad targeting demographic for you know what you're going to bump up against with something like the election ads so is there any like takeaway from that is there any like here's what you can do or is it just kind of like it is what it is like we just you just have to pay more it is what it is and then I think though it is a good or strategy wise well strategy wise I mean it it depends on you know your cycle of what you're marketing yourself but I I think it's just a case of especially if you're using a third party having that realization that you know if you're like wow why are my ad costs up 15 20% um that's just an explanation yeah it's it's not that um you know they're doing worse targeting it's just you're you're going up against that big money from the political campaigns yeah yeah just just another crappy thing of being alive just another thing about this two-party political system that we live in y and and it's funny like you think about it like for those ad Delivery Systems like how much they make during this period of time yeah and how much you know they are value you know like I wonder if they did a study like how much more money Google makes on close election years versus like if it was a blowout or like maybe it's like two or three really tight States yeah is that private information um it probably is I've never seen anything publicly um well Google's a publicly traded companies so they must have to do like quarter quarter reports of income earn but I don't think they get down granular to be like okay you know this part of the network made X or you know we made money from other other serves weird yeah but it is a good segue into thinking about 2025 yes um what specifically so you know again I was saying how like right now is a time where marketers uh marketing departments internal marketing departments at companies I think are are really looking for like what's going to be what's going to be the big thing in 2025 or you know where do we need to where do we need to um move resources or um you know what tactics are we looking at um and I think it's you know it's it's a good time to talk about that in years past how have you kind of looked ahead and figured that out um I think for me it's been a lot of like looking at like what are other companies doing really well right now and then like kind of looking at the emerging Technologies I think what's really thrown uh a spanner in the mix if you will he's a little UK slang there yeah love it yeah um for like maybe my one UK listener yeah y I mean unless you know Rachel must be listening yeah Rachel um you know the throwing that wrench and everything is I think there's always a fad of a technology or a tactic um and the fat like blockchain in the past and people get really excited about or um I think um like different targeting as far as programmatic was like you know the big thing and everyone was talking about like oh programmatic um I think the one that's been more difficult is everything is AI yeah and un Andi we've talked a lot about AI mhm I think the issue is is like cutting through hype to what is really useful with AI yeah that's a good point yeah um AI that I find that I don't particularly like or I don't think is ready for prime time one of them is like Google Gemini okay so you know they're trying to embed it in Google workspace so I've been running that for about a month um and it just like it has not saved me any time yeah and you know for being like Oh like we can summarize your email and I'm like yeah well I I can just read the email it's you know it took me 10 seconds to read the email or like like the things that it produces in um in slides now I haven't used it really well in Excel so maybe there's I mean in sheets there might be some better things there but like using it in um in in like docs or slides I just haven't gotten a lot of usage of it that I'm like oh that saved me some time or that was really useful and it's Gemini that pops up in Google Search right at the top that gives you like a quick summary of search results yeah I think Google just uses Gemini for basically uh anything that anything that they do is Google owned yeah yeah the only thing I I do see is that's different is the um notebook yeah which I am really excited about Google notebook uh if you haven't used it it's a great um being able to take larger data and some summarize it and it's got that great podcast feature yeah which I would love to start using for clients but I feel like it's going to be super recognizable in voicewise voicewise format wise and people are going to you're going to start seeing that used in a lot of different ways especially if you just do it in a way that makes the it come out to sounding cheap yeah in low quality but I don't think it sounds cheap in low quality like the podcasts we've done with it like we've put together podcasts based on our our like a couple of our case studies right yeah in fact maybe if you get a chance um we can put that that podcast up as a bonus content yeah for this podcast if anyone wants to listen to so what we did was we took one of our case studies and we fed it in Notebook llm and it created a awesome podcast talking about our efforts with our clients the Texas Medical Association Insurance trust and you know it it does not sound like it's AI generated MH so I think that's a tool I I'm excited about I'm also excited I'm not super excited about um as far as marketing some of the tools that are automating like uh um automating presentations I just haven't seen anything that's come like I got gamma and I was excited about Gamma um gamma's one of these like PowerPoint type creates presentations for you and and some parts of it I was like well it's got some good features as far as you can give it an outline of what you wanted to create but like there was so much editing that needed and the images just were so AI like it wasn't anything that I would ever put in front of a client yeah so like those tools I don't think are quite there yet yeah um and then like everybody's rolling out their AI tools right yeah yeah um you know like co-pilot on your Microsoft device now where hubspot's got Breeze um even like just small things like there's built into Instagram it's built into canva it's built into your phone like in a lot of small ways like right yeah and but I think it's just like cutting through like what of it is a novelty thing that's like oh that's cute or we must include it because it's trendy right or what actually saves time or makes helps me to make better decisions and that's where I'm kind of you know as far as like all these platforms you know they're baking it in now and being like oh this is what's going to be super valuable for 20125 but what of that is actually really going to be a valuable tool and what of it is just going to be a distraction yeah that's the part I'm still sorting through yeah so thinking about that for client work next year year so I do think one of the things that that is going to allow is it's going to allow more multimedia production with AI especially for topics that might be uh non exciting topics okay so in your B2B realm I think it is going to be able to give the option of maybe for marketing we've just been putting out blogs and web pages uh that we can start cre creating better video content better social content uh with some of these tools I that's where I am excited about it um faster faster but also you know being able to take what we would call boring marketing so marketing like technical like again we're primarily in insurance and Banks is our as our Focus taking those types of clients and being able to um being able to produce something that's going to be useful for their consumers you know where it's insurance is a great one because there's a lot of details there's a lot of people need to be educated but you know who wants to read a four page blog on disability insurance and the ins and outs of it right where I think you'd rather be able to consume it you know in a in a bite size or in a in a video format where things are explained um but up until now you know like how do you how do you do that in a video format I think that's part of what goes into making those decisions is every year people are consuming content differently there was a time when people would sit down to read a Blog and then there was a time when they they wanted it shorter or they then everyone wanted videos but then they weren't really listening to videos with the audio want you had to caption everything now you know what I mean so like as things move through time it's like how are going to people going to be insisting on consuming their content next year yeah and and I think just also attention sh attention spans are so shot yeah that you know that we are consuming these just like bright bite size pieces versus you know instead of one long piece of content getting in front of them with three four smaller pieces of content Y and I think as that goes people are going to do more and more like outlandish things to jump in front of attention yes Nutter butter Nutter butter or is it Nutter butter I don't know the cookies the derang like like somebody's on acid over at Nutter butter oh I vaguely know what you're talking about yeah that what what did they do I don't remember you just got to look at their their Tik Tok and and and wonder who's on drugs no I'm thinking of Dunkin Donuts for Halloween did you oh spider their spider stuff so funny I listen humor and marketing Works yes and that went viral and was very very funny yes I love humor and marketing I do too I'm very Pro for that can we can we take a pause for a moment and talk about talking about something going viral and again appropriate we are the last day before the election uhhuh and New York State killing squirrels I didn't hear about that tell me what you what talking christe tell me what you're talking about it's it's it's time it's it's time to it's it's small talk with Christi and Bill I love I love these moments when someone doesn't know about some Holy Roman Empire not too holy not too Roman talk mon yourself talk it's coffee talk time Coffee Talk new yor killing squirrels okay this is the this is the crazy one to me is how this election cycle is gone right so who first of all let's back up a week right Madison Square Garden Tony do you know what his last name is the the comedian that does all the roasts like he was on the Tom Brady roast he's like that's he's a professional roast comedian basically just making fun of everybody and they booked him as like one of the openings to the Trump campaign okay and big Madison Square Garden rally for Trump right okay and like obviously nobody vetted this guy to be like hey this is the biggest political stunt we're throwing and we're going to get speakers let's get this guy whose entire comedy is enraging and making fun of people oh and he's the guy who got on and talked about the giant island of floating garbage and said it was Puerto Rico oh my God like at an election event in New York like you know and everybody was just like can can you imagine like he just derailed the entire campaign because you know they the other campaign jumped on it immediately and was like yep look at what he's done yeah like he's called all everyone Puerto Rican garbage like there goes the Puerto Rican vote and you know that would just seem like the biggest faux paw of everything so there was there was that in you know in election cycle and we're like man that that whoops that's bad and then somebody asked Biden about it who's not running right so you know Grandpa Biden now he you know they're like what do you think about this gar Puerto Rican garbage comment and he's like well Trump's followers are garbage so then that all became you know everyone's talking about like that like you know like they like it was that was Biden's response yeah like he got did like a reverse UNO card you know like oh my God so there's all that going on and then over the weekend there's this Tik Tock personality who has Peanut the squirrel this guy who this this married couple they have a had a squirrel and a raccoon and it was like he saved it as a baby and it was his pet and it was all over the Tik Tok and Instagram you know like this this family with a squirrel some crazy Karen lady was upset because it was against the law didn't have enough a permit so called it in to like the environmental police in New York who raided their house with a SWAT team oh my word and put peanut down they euthanized they euthanized the squirrel okay this internet celebrity squel euthanized it how like shot it on site no I think they took it back to wherever but like can you imagine squat team but can you imagine a squat team showing up to raid your house for your pet squirrel and and then taking it and killing it and doing it the week before the election idiots you know to be like oh man the Twitter memes about about peanut and oh that's so sad like all these memes of peanut with harambe in heaven and I'm just like you know but I'm just like what a weird news cycle social media cycle that got people upset about government overreach and the need to curtail government because someone raided a house over a squirrel and that's like become like a political story and I just would love to see Trump get in a squirrel costume for like one of his final like you know we're we've reached that level of crazy train to be like I support peanut I like there was a fake memo went out about like Trump's support of peanut I think it was fake I but it could be real it could be you never know um but I just think it's like like what if that you know what if Peanut the squirrel was the thing in the end that swayed the election oh man I mean no one would be shocked honestly like at this point it is all so crazy it's all so crazy oh my word yeah so peanut oh I'm so sad for him poor peanut yep I hope he was peacefully euthanized and who thought that was a good idea yeah yeah why not just bring him back to some kind of animal Rehabilitation why does he need to die yeah maybe he was Rabbid I'm going to tell myself he was rabid I bet that's what the government's trying to say to cover up their I have to believe it so I feel better about it yeah and they got the rock he was actually a murderer s squirrel somebody said somebody was like wait for all of um peanuts racist tweets to come out oh my god I've been I've been seeing like I've been seeing them like replacing like George Floyd with Peanut's head on like that the pictures from like trying to imagine how many stupid memes there are the internet is a horrible but amusing Place yep I hadn't even heard about that yep to be fair I shared I was out this weekend and I asked a couple people I brought up the name Ray Gun you know who ray gun is and the people I was with were like I don't know who you're talking about and I'm like Ray Gun you know the Australian break dancer and they were like what are you talking about I'm like how do you not know what I'm talking about so that is a funny thing about working in marketing right like we unfortunately have to be like on The Cutting Edge of cultural zygus like that's not the right word zyg zist it feels like you're on the right track I'm probably maybe I'm just going to mouth it and then she can just like put the word in and yeah I don't know I can AI your voice AI my voice being like like these cultural moments like and we have to have our pulse on it and like we know these like the weirdest like little Trends on social media and any normal San person like my wife works in insurance and I'm be like I'll come home and I'm be like did you hear the craziness about peanut the squirrel and she's just like I don't have any room in my brain for that bill that's so true I don't have any storage left for that dumb yeah dumb meme crap yeah she she just or like I have to explain memes to her and I'm like this is adorable yes yeah y well did you know that Ray Gun is challenging people that if they are a better break dancer than her she's paying up to $10,000 so if you're looking to make any money how did she how how does she have any money to do that if you're looking to make any money easy money you can make $10,000 from Ray Gun I'm going to start practicing my worm yeah yeah do you have to fly to Australia to do it I don't know maybe it's all we should look into it we should all start practicing break dancing oh I would I would break a y I'm I'm at that point in my life I'm be like I'd be like I'm going to do a my what do you think in the office would be our best shot at at break dancing break dancing I'm going to say something controversial here yeah I think Anna I think Anna's got some secret Florida break D break dancing I think you could be right or maybe Dan well Deb is a Dancer that's true but I don't know if she's break dancing is a different kind of weird yeah I just can't see Deb I bet Kevin could bust out some really strange I bet Kevin probably can do the caterpillar I mean like he's probably like pop and lock pop that probably that was his nickname what do you think is the least likely Tim Tim Tim break dancing would just like break my brain yes he could never yeah yeah he's not going to make us the money he's not going to make us any money he could actually be worse than um than ray gun than ray gun he he could he could go up head-to-head with her I think but it'd be a close call yeah so what what about you chrisy what predictions do you have for 2025 marketing I think the way that video is heading is continues to be different I think that the expectations of how your videos are made are continuing to be uh you have to you really have to keep up with the um the ways people want to consume content and so I think that uh especially for what how I make videos going to have to continue to be smarter um and more um and I'm eager to see how social media is going to change and who's going to be on what platforms do you think influencer marketing is going to be more or less significant in

2025 I'm hoping I don't know I feel like I feel like possibly less if I had to guess just because there are so many influencers but that could in fact be the reason that it will be more I don't know what do you think I think it's going to be less impact and I think the election cycle shakes that a little bit because people are seeing like what really is the influence of someone publicly giving their stand for something that's a good point um and then I think because of the polarization of that it it especially for um influencers that are being political either way right right like you you are going to anger part of your demographic um so there's going to be there's going to be a lull after that right and what do you think about cancel culture I mean Cancer cancel culture in an election year is always the worst because there's that um again there's that large population either way that's going to be disenfranchised um and feel that things are going in a wrong direction and they're going to blame people that were vocal about yes vocal and you know and if it's you know people on the right are going to be like oh the Hollywood Elites and then like we shouldn't listen to them anymore what do they really have to share for us and then you know on the other side you know again people that are I you see it all the time like sticker mu I think is a great example like I had no idea of any type of political of where I bought my stickers right stickers mules was like everybody in the office like sticker mual because you know they would have so many good deals right it was just kind of like oh let's hold out and see what what type of cool deal sticker mu throws out yeah and then like they went like super mega and I you know I don't know the full story behind it but like the amount of people that were just like I'm never buying from Sticker Mule again yeah and you know like that kind of divisiveness like people are sewing the seeds to far right now um you know like people's attention to that stuff I think wains so but I think you're still going to look at like a six-month period where 6 months where people are still going to be very um wey um kind of either celebrating or licking their wounds um and as far as like who they support and kind of remembering where people stood well and I think that way that cancel culture keeps fitting into influencer marketing is I keep seeing more and more that it the expectation of influencers to get involved in one way or another and if they get involved in a way that then cancels them then they're canceled and then the expectation like uh you know why are you not using your platform to speak up free Palestine why are you not speaking on this platform since you have this big platform so it's like the expectation of them to be using their platform for something political and then if they don't that turns into them getting cancelled so it's like I don't know I don't know if that will move influencers to not find it worth it anymore but I mean they may not say to it worth it I mean they're just I mean that's their livelihood so they're going to still do it it's just whether they impact and whether they're going to be listen to yeah and the hard data on that too like is it going to be worth investing in influencers yeah I mean I think your traditional influencers like your sports people or and other um you know people that we marketing has always traditionally tagged movie stars Sports Heroes I think just kind of these Fringe you know YouTube stars and um things like that like whether Jake Paul's going to be able to um still walk after his time with um Mike Tyson or not you know things like that to be seen but um yeah like those types of influencers I just I wonder about like influencers who are just influencing for the sake of their influence those ones are the ones I think are the most vulnerable versus someone like people have an affinity toward them because they're a musician or they're you know they may not you know they may separate a little bit more of their personal views from them as far as like recommendations and things like that but yeah yeah I don't know I'm probably still GNA buy something of Jeremy Swayman yeah you know holds it up on TV I mean you know it' be hard not to it' be hard not to as a Boston sports fan yeah I mean it be hard just because look at him look at him it's funny to me that you know who Jeremy Swayman is obviously I do yes or you're really good at faking your hockey knowledge no no no oh yeah that Jeremy sing obviously I'm not I'm on that side of Tik Tok yes yeah all right yeah I was I was going to bait her into being like Jeremy Swayman really shoots a really great three-pointer no he's guarding that goal all right all right it's legit it's legit it's legit it's legit no I am stuck on that side of Tik Tok I want to be yeah so well I think we're going to wrap this but yeah I think uh if you're at listening to this and in the comment section I'd love to hear your predictions for 2025 yeah I I also would maybe you could make a short inflammatory Tik Tok about me saying something and then we could just anger people so they'll rage comment yeah what about rage bait yeah yeah peanut deserved to die okay that's our clip canceled cancelled and that's enough yeah that's enough Today podcast canceled podcast can I think it will increase engagement that's why people do it the engagement yeah yeah thank you for being here leave us comments yeah thanks for being on the thanks for joining us on our podcast and uh listening to podcast talk and please Bill come back and see us again soon well I will cuz my office this is spray upstairs perfect perfect it's a it's it's not a bad commute to do a podcast Perfect all right all right see you guys next time next time