What's Next, Now: September 2025
This month, our crystal ball predicts fourth wall-breaking marketing, the rise of alt asset investing, a step back into the past, and more.
What do Jim and Pam, Fleabag, and modern marketers all have in common? They’re breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly.
Marketers are stepping out from behind the camera and into the spotlight. While influencers turning into business owners is nothing new, the reverse is a little more surprising. Brands are beginning to create their own influencer-style content: posting office behind-the-scenes clips, documenting the creative process, putting CEOs into campy TikTok challenges, or sharing at-home “get ready with me” videos featuring their own products.
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There’s no better example than Zaria Parvez, the well-known creative force behind Duolingo’s sometimes notorious, always popular social media presence. She told The Wall Street Journal, “The biggest gift I gave myself was when I went on LinkedIn back in 2021 and took credit for my work.” By doing so, she became the influencer herself. And while she recently announced she’s leaving the brand, her legacy will follow her wherever she goes next.
Marketers’ work is paying off. Trend expert Emily Sundberg recently highlighted the rise of marketing fans in brand comment sections. “This is genius marketing,” one Instagram user wrote. Another chimed in: “Marketing always slays!” A third added, “Your creative director deserves a raise (it’s probably you).” Instead of engaging with the content itself, commenters are increasingly praising the people behind the scripts, the strategies, and the screens.
Alongside marketers-as-influencers, another kind of new branded content is popping up in the form of short, social-friendly series. One notable example is Roomies, a Friends-style episodic about young people living in New York City, created by renter app Bilt. The series lives on its own account, with no obvious mention of the company behind it, yet it has amassed more than 80,000 TikTok followers. Many viewers are either unaware of the brand connection or simply don’t care — as long as the content is worth watching.
Consumers are more aware than ever of the mechanics of marketing. That leaves brands with two paths: either acknowledge this awareness and lean into authenticity, or disguise involvement so thoroughly that the content no longer even appears to be branded.
Gen Z has been pushing forward a different kind of relationship with money for quite some time — more open, more honest, and more candid. They’re willing to talk about financial anxiety and struggles with debt, and also equate money to more playful topics like gambling and speculative investing.
This has led to a shift in the investing world. Thirty percent of Gen Z start investing in early adulthood, compared to just 9% of Gen X and 6% of Baby Boomers. But it’s not just about traditional portfolios or retirement accounts — Gen Z is always looking for a cooler way to do something. Financial institutions have taken notice of the generation’s increasing focus on alternative assets.
In a recent CNBC segment, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan described a clear generational shift in how capital is being allocated: Gen Z wants exposure to alternative asset classes their parents often overlooked, like private credit, collectibles, fractional ownership, and digital-first alternative investment platforms.
Traditional investments often require patience and long time horizons, but Gen Z is used to immediacy. Alternative assets can offer a sense of quicker payoff, higher risk and reward, and more control over where and how their money moves. For this generation, investing is not just about building wealth over decades. Instead, it’s more about aligning financial decisions with their pace, preferences, and priorities right now.
With the $124 trillion dollar intergenerational wealth transfer already underway, all eyes are on how Gen Z will continue to reshape the money conversation.
For over 20 years, Project Runway has opened their shows with the line: “In fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out.” Now, it seems those words apply to Anna Wintour. After 37 years as editor-in-chief of Vogue, Wintour is stepping down from the role (though she’ll remain with parent company Condé Nast). Chloe Malle, who has been with the company since 2011, will succeed her as the new head of editorial content for American Vogue.
Malle takes the reins at a pivotal moment. In August, Vogue ran a Guess ad that used AI-generated models and sparked backlash across the industry. Critics worried what this meant for the human talent — models, photographers, stylists — whose artistry has always defined fashion’s cultural power.
Fashion isn’t the only industry facing a reckoning between heritage and reinvention. Cracker Barrel drew its own fire this summer after unveiling a new, simplified logo and remodeling its restaurants from cozy and quaint to “modern.” Loyalists claimed the brand had stripped away its soul, while calling out the loss of Uncle Herschel, the familiar figure from the original logo.
As the world races forward, consumers are increasingly reaching backward. They’re finding comfort in nostalgia: real models instead of AI stand-ins, heritage logos instead of pared-back minimalism, glossy magazines instead of infinite scrolls.
Cracker Barrel has already hit pause on its rebrand, signaling the risks of moving too far, too fast. As for Vogue, Malle may find her biggest opportunity lies not in doubling down on the new, but in reimagining the timeless — perhaps bringing back the glamour, exclusivity, and collectible print editions that once made Vogue the ultimate fashion artifact.
While this doesn’t mean brands should avoid change, they need to tread carefully, ensuring evolution doesn’t erase the authenticity that made people care in the first place. Because sometimes, the boldest step forward is a thoughtful step back.
It’s instinctual to protect the young: Kangaroos tuck joeys safely in their pouches, elephants and penguins form circles to barricade their babies, and humans … Well, we write laws around technology. For example, Mississippi recently passed an age-assurance law regulating children’s use of social media. Some families are also calling for public policy change related to AI chatbots, which are currently under scrutiny for their inconsistent, and sometimes dangerous, responses to people in crisis.
Meanwhile, the Netflix documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, paints an even darker picture: a mother secretly sending her daughter 30 to 50 cyberbullying messages a day. If the danger isn’t in the technology itself, it can come from the way humans choose to weaponize it.
Parents are left with difficult choices. Even the most diligent can’t fully shield their children if other families allow unsupervised smartphone use. Some are even rethinking whether kids need smartphones at all. Landlines and other “retro” technologies are quietly making a comeback — a reminder that sometimes the safest innovations are the ones we thought we’d left behind.
Technology isn’t slowing down, and regulations like Mississippi’s are unlikely to keep pace with innovation (plus, they introduce their own problematic privacy implications). That’s why brands can’t afford to treat compliance as the finish line. The real opportunity — and responsibility — lies in building products, policies, and practices that prioritize children’s wellbeing from the start. When protection becomes part of innovation, progress isn’t just faster. It’s safer, smarter, and more sustainable.
AI is going to take our jobs. AI is going to create jobs. AI is going to take over the world so jobs no longer exist. We’ve heard it all. Now, we actually have some data.
According to a new study from Stanford University, the adoption of generative AI has clearly coincided with a drop in job opportunities for entry-level workers in several industries. The affected sectors have been already identified by experts as particularly vulnerable to AI automation — think coding, software development, and customer service. In these areas, the research found a 16% decline in employment for those ages 22 to 25.
Another review of employment data found that recent college graduates (ages 22 to 27) in coding are facing some of the highest unemployment rates in the country: 6.1% for computer science, 7.5% for computer engineering. That’s more than double the rate for humanities graduates like biology and art history, which sits at just 3%.
Of course, it’s not just AI. The rise of hard tech has brought an end to fun, quirky tech jobs and lavish perks. (If you haven’t heard of hard tech yet, check out last month’s issue.) The pandemic, along with resulting RTO policies, has further eroded benefits. And layoffs in the tech sector continue to surge. Taken together, these factors are making the industry especially uninviting for young people.
An industry without young people is a dying industry, regardless of whether AI is doing the jobs. Tech needs to find ways to reskill, train, and build new pipelines of talent — and a strong hiring process is a good place to start.
Right now, graduates and job seekers find the environment especially unwelcoming. At career fairs, for example, it’s become standard practice to tell visitors to “just apply online” instead of making the personal connections those events are meant for. AI résumé screening often filters out candidates unfairly, and AI-led interviews can feel impersonal and frustrating. A human-first hiring approach could surface candidates who are not only qualified but also eager to learn and grow in ways AI can’t replicate.
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Thrifting, Disney World, chicken nuggets — all things that used to be for money-savers and penny-pinchers, and now are increasingly out of reach (if you buy chicken nuggets with caviar, at least).
While Chili’s, Red Lobster, and California Pizza Kitchen might have all had recent Gen Z-driven comebacks, mall retail hasn’t been able to capture the same second act.
Our new favorite neologism: “pharm-to-table.” The phrase perfectly captures the move to DIY healthcare and the rejection of big-system authority in the medical world.
Want to hear more? Explore the Tier One blog, TOP TALK, for the latest digital marketing trends, tips, and insights.
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