As the late, great Prince once sang, “I have seen the future, and it will be.” And, look at us now, here we are.
As part of our annual Three Trends series, we asked industry leaders to share their views on what lies ahead, while also reflecting on the year that has passed.
Next, we speak with Jade Manning – Creative Partner at Today the Brave.
Jade looks ahead to what the future holds in the coming year, reflects on his least favorite trend from the past year, and shares his favorite campaign of 2025. He also answers perhaps the most important question: Did he finally watch “Severance”?
Looking Ahead:
What are three trends to look for in the coming year?
1. Human Certified
Recently, while listening to one of my regular podcasts, I noticed that the show now commences with an innocuous “made-by-humans” disclaimer- which felt both slightly redundant and oddly comforting.
Online, we’re neck-deep in a rip of AI slop, coupled with a growing inability to distinguish what’s made by a person and what’s made by a machine. In that environment, reassurance suddenly becomes a pretty attractive product feature. The desire to know something is really human-made, or at the very least human-led, will shape its demand in the future.
It’s not inconceivable to imagine a future not unlike the cigarette warning labels of decades ago, where content and entertainment providers will be legally required to disclose AI usage in creations.
2. The bursting of the AI-Fear Bubble
This is closely tied to the above, and if I’m honest, it’s probably more hope than prediction. Right now, the creative industry is operating under a quiet blanket of panic about what AI means for creativity, echoed in industry news on a near-daily basis.
I hope this is the year that the bubble of AI fear pops- just as it did with the “digital-will-kill-art” panic of the early 2000s, and the proclaimed “demise of photography” when Instagram arrived.
You can feel it in meeting rooms, where the narrative of “machines can’t create, only imitate” seems to be delivered with shrinking confidence. Because right now, anything can feel inevitable.
I hope this is the year that the bubble of AI fear pops- just as it did with the “digital-will-kill-art” panic of the early 2000s, and the proclaimed “demise of photography” when Instagram arrived. I hope this is the year we become unstuck from the looping debates and start using AI unashamedly as a tool, and as an extension of human intent.
3. Hyper-Contextual Personalisation
Over the holidays, while scrolling through Prime, I landed on a documentary that turned out to be entirely visualised, and judging by the awful writing, almost certainly entirely written by AI too. I couldn’t bear more than two minutes. But after shrugging off the shame of being catfished, and groaning about the days of Ken Burns and Morgan Freeman–voiced doco’s, the experience reinforced what could be our “AI-silver-lining”.
While we hurtle towards an age of volume-first content, designed less to be watched than to bulk out catalogues there just may be, at the opposite end of this dire pendulum swing, the potential for the complete opposite- a world of hyper-personalised experiences and uber-bespoke content.
Because the same technology that fuels audiences’ growing fatigue with generic content now provides the ability to efficiently deliver unique and hyper-personalised content experiences. Mastercard’s Transit Tales campaign last year demonstrated this beautifully- where stories were customised by AI to match the length of your commute. With faster testing and deeper relevance, ironically, AI may just be the very tool that helps us move closer to human stories and more personal storytelling at scale.
Looking Back:
Your favorite or least favorite trend of 2025?
Least – Spontaneous dancing in adverts.
If you could sum up 2025 in one emoji:
🤔
One of your favorite campaigns of 2025:
The Best Place in the World to Have Herpes by Motion Sickness.
What was your 2025 New Year’s Resolution, and did you keep it?
To finally watch Severance. No..
