What Marketers Need To Know About Tomorrow

There’s no let-up on the pace of change, and 2025 already feels like a full year (it’s only just reached April). And while marketing professionals aim to grasp some of those developments, plenty more are taking place across innovation, arts and culture that it’s now impossible to keep up.

Returning from Austin after another year of attending SXSW, the festival of culture, technology and barbeque, St Luke’s chief strategy officer Dan Hulse and chief marketing officer Jessica Gibb share some of the insights and activations that they witnessed across the programme held around the host city of Austin.

After chasing a cockerel that wasn't meant to be in their rented accommodation, the pair attended sessions involving a lot of AI related sessions, including one featuring actual Disney droids, author Maggie Wilson’s talk around the power of human uncertainty, as well as nervous sessions featuring Doctor Chelsea Clinton and US senator Elizabeth Warren. They also learned that when it comes to lawyers versus robots, “it’s not even close” - the droids win.

“Don't bring a human to a robot fight,” Hulse quotes from a futurist session he attended.

Creative Salon shares just a few takeaways from the annual debrief to clients.

Traditional Expertise Is Dead — Adaptability Is the New Superpower

Why it matters:
AI is now outperforming humans in areas once thought untouchable, from law to radiography to creative writing. The pace of change means careers will now require continuous learning and reinvention, not static expertise.

Insight for marketers:
Brands must pivot from promoting authority to showcasing agility, innovation, and continuous relevance. Internally, marketing teams need to hire and train for adaptability — people who can unlearn, relearn, and synthesise knowledge from diverse sources.

From Creative Spark to Strategic Threat: AI Is Now Generating the “Good Ideas”

Why it matters:
AI isn't just assisting, it’s originating. Industry icons like Paul Schrader admitted AI-generated story concepts were “good, original and fleshed out.” That’s a seismic shift in creative development, but it still lacks humanity.

Insight for marketers:
The role of creative strategists is shifting from ideation to curation, judgment, and differentiation. As AI floods the space with “good enough,” brand-building must emphasise distinctiveness rooted in emotional intelligence, storytelling craft, and cultural fluency — things AI still lacks.

From Human-to-Human to Human-to-Agent: Prepare for AI as Your Customer’s Gatekeeper

Why it matters:
Agentic AI — proactive systems that make decisions on behalf of users — is poised to become the interface between people and brands. It won’t just recommend; it’ll act, plan, and purchase autonomously.

Insight for marketers:
Marketers are no longer just targetting consumers — they are about to engage AI agents that are tasked with making their user's lives easier. This means creating machine-readable brand value, optimising for algorithmic trust, and ensuring a brand is contextually relevant to AI-driven recommendations. The traditional customer journey is about to be rewritten.

Intellectual Promiscuity Beats Narrow Mastery

Why it matters:
Unlikely connections between fields (e.g. embroidery + medicine = surgical sutures) are where breakthroughs happen. This interdisciplinary cross-pollination is the antidote to AI’s probabilistic “sameness”.

Insight for marketers:
Teams and campaigns that integrate different domains (e.g., data + design, neuroscience + storytelling) will outpace those who stick to silos. Encourage learning outside your vertical. Innovation comes from intersectionality, not repetition.

Uncertainty Is Fuel, Not Fear — Embrace the Discomfort

Why it matters:
In a world of AI acceleration and social unrest, human instinct is to cling to the familiar. But research shows uncertainty fires up the brain’s problem-solving potential — it sharpens focus, increases learning, and enhances memory.

Insight for marketers:
Build teams and creative cultures that lean into discomfort. Encourage experimentation, debate, and “opposite thinking” (e.g. What if we did the reverse?). From idea generation to testing media strategies, tension and disagreement drive better outcomes — and innovation.

The full hour-long debrief can be watched on St Luke's dedicated SXSW homepage.