Caroline Albro on 2025 brand marketing trends

Plus: the VC fundraising landscape, America's loneliness epidemic, and more 🗞️

Jan 07, 2025

Hello and welcome back to Brandscape!

In today’s letter:

Interview with
Caroline Albro
Headlines of the week
Recent product launches

Caroline Albro is an Associate Marketing Manager at Intuit Mailchimp and the writer of Brand Baby here on Substack. Make sure to read her letter twice a week for the latest on marketing trends, brand bites, and more.

Could you provide an overview of what you do at Mailchimp?

I’m an Associate Marketing Manager at Mailchimp, where I started as an intern in 2021. I work on the Brand Team, where I focus on brand partnerships, activations, and sponsorships to drive brand awareness – I’ve worked on everything from a pop-up activation at New York Fashion Week to a recent exhibition called ‘Email is ~~Dead~~’ at SXSW Sydney.

What inspired you to start your newsletter, Brand Baby?

I started Brand Baby a little over a year ago as an outlet beyond my day job. I love thinking and talking about brands and marketing, and I wanted to share that passion with a wider audience. I’ve also always loved to research and write (I studied sociology in college), and my favorite part of my day is when I sit down at my desk to read my favorite newsletters every morning.

I decided to launch on Substack because it seemed like a really great community-first platform. I’m a big fan of long-form written content in general – video doesn’t come as naturally to me, though I have started posting a little bit on TikTok. I didn’t really think

Brand Baby

would grow beyond a couple hundred subscribers, so I’m super proud of the growth I’ve seen over the past year.

How does having an outlet like Brand Baby influence how you think about your work?

I do a lot of research for Brand Baby, so I’m definitely plugged into marketing trends and strategies that help inform my approach to work. I will say, a good amount of my content is focused on consumer brands and trends, so some of it isn’t easily applicable to the work I do at a B2B tech company, but it’s still helpful to have a pulse on trends and interesting brands. I’m able to bring an informed opinion to the table, in addition to a Gen Z perspective :) The insights I gain through Brand Baby research have also brought out more personal confidence in the workplace. Good things all around!

What are your favorite resources for marketing/brand inspiration?

Oh gosh, so many Substack newsletters! My friend

zoya

writes an excellent newsletter, on my mind as of late, and another pal Sabena 🪄
writes a fabulous newsletter, Brandiose. I get a lot of inspiration from other brands’ social media platforms – social is a really great space to have fun, take risks, and showcase your brand’s identity.

Perhaps the most important form of inspiration for me is just from conversations with my friends, family, and colleagues – whether they’re in the marketing world or not – about what’s catching their attention, what they’ve purchased lately, and what content they’re consuming. I love talking to other Gen Zs and Gen Alpha about what makeup they’re using, their favorite influencers, etc.

What was your favorite marketing moment in 2024?

This is a tough one… I really liked when Bobbie put up the Molly Baz billboard in Times Square after another ad featuring Molly from Swehl had been taken down for being “too provocative.” I wrote about it here!

Brand Baby

Issue #16: A busy week for billboards

Hi everyone! And helloooo to all my new subscribers, thank you for being here :) There’s a lot to discuss this week. You might have to click on ‘View entire message’ at the bottom of the email to read the full thing. We’re talking…

a year ago · 4 likes · Caroline Albro

What marketing trends are you forecasting for 2025?

I actually spoke to Zoya about this for a recent issue. I’m bullish on long-form content – video content, written content, audio content. I think the endless short-form content scroll is starting to take its toll, and we’re going to start seeking out more long-form content.

Ed Elson recently wrote a great piece called, ‘People are the new brands,’ and I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Influencers, CEOs, employees, podcasters – they’re the brand now. I think that we’re going to see people really start leaning into this. Founders are going to create more content around themselves, like launching Substacks to document how they’ve started and grown their brands.

“Influencers, CEOs, employees, podcasters – they’re the brand now.”

What’s your favorite brand right now? Why does it stick out to you?

I’ve been enjoying seeing what Air is up to on social media. They hired

Kareem Rahma

(of Subway Takes fame) and others for a super fun video series, and they’ve continued to push the boundaries on content that you typically see from B2B saas companies. I love to see a tech company having some fun on social!

Thanks, Caroline! Make sure to check out

Brand Baby

Headlines of the week 📰

Brands are planning to spend big on partnerships with podcasts and emerging sports leagues in 2025. Podcasts with a video component are especially lucrative because they provide another way for the listener to experience the content. The planned increase in emerging sports partnerships makes sense given that smaller leagues like Major League Pickleball are gaining traction.
LPs are demonstrating reduced optimism for this year, which could slow venture funding. This is based on research from Preqin and Cambridge Associates. In 2024, global fundraising was around $101 billion, and it’s expected to “stay roughly flat” this year. This is the result of a lack of distributions (i.e. LPs not getting the returns they expect). However, there is some optimism surrounding potential IPOs this year, including Chime and Stripe, as they could provide liquidity and returns for LPs.
In for 2025: continuing to buy $8 lattes. Despite the effects of inflation, this spending habit seems relatively unbreakable. Consumers are instead reallocating what they might have spent at restaurants and spending it at coffee shops. According to Circana, consumer spending at coffee shops was up 55% in 2024 compared to 2017.

The U.S. loneliness epidemic has far-reaching implications. In the article by Ed Elson that Caroline mentioned above, Elson mentioned that the emphasis on people > brands is, in large part, a response to feelings of loneliness and a loss of connection to others. Therefore, we are more likely to resonate with a video of someone talking to us rather than a faceless brand. I also came across this piece in The Atlantic by Ellen Cushing about how Americans need to party more. Her call-to-action is also a response to the loneliness epidemic. She cited a statistic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that only 4.1% of Americans attended or hosted a social event on an average weekend or holiday in 2023.
- It’ll be interesting to see how brands work to respond to this epidemic in 2025. How will it inform marketing strategies? Will brands work to host more in-person events? How will they engage their communities? Are we going to see a resurgence of Outdoor Voices circa 2018-style meetups? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

outdoorvoices

A post shared by @outdoorvoices

Recent launches 🚀

Nécessaire hopped on the lip balm wave last week with The Lip Balm. As always, their product photography is great.
Topicals launched Clearly, a 2-step regimen featuring a mist and mask to control breakouts. I really enjoyed this BTS post featuring photos from their product team.
Madhappy just announced a collab with Juicy Couture. Launch date TBA.