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#BizTrends2025: Vodacom’s Andisa Ntsubane – The anatomy of winning brands in 2025
As we navigate the complexities of 2025, winning brands will evolve to meet emerging challenges and opportunities.
Andisa Ntsubane, Vodacom managing executive: brand, marketing and communication gives five strategies that will allow brands to be the winning brands of 2025 (Image supplied)
The following key strategies will distinguish the leading brands of this year:
- Leadership brands taking distinctive stances on issues
In an era marked by multifaceted global and local issues, consumers increasingly expect brands to embody their purpose through concrete actions.
Winning brands will align their strategies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), leveraging purpose-driven narratives and partnerships to drive meaningful societal impact.
Tackling systemic challenges and building “citizen-led” brands will see a new era of brand differentiation.
- Turning brand into demand
Brand to demand is an audience-focused full-funnel approach to marketing typically used in B2B marketing.
It emphasises the idea that brand awareness leads to demand generation by ensuring close alignment between marketing initiatives with the buyer journey.
2025 will see this approach being applied and accelerated by B2C brands leveraging an understanding of customer journeys and media consumption patterns to develop integrated marketing and communications strategies (ATL media, digital marketing, proposition PR, BTL and activations), customer experience enhancements and go-to-market plans that drive business and brand outcomes.
- Harnessing next-generation technologies
2025 will see accelerated piloting and further adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies transforming marketing landscapes.
New tech will be used for hyper-personalised advertising, predictive analytics, and enhanced customer experiences.
This integration will drive creative breakthroughs but can also improve operational efficiency across the value chain.
- Elevating storytelling through influencers and authentic content
In 2025, authentic storytelling is paramount to engagement.
Brands will increasingly collaborate with influencers and creators to produce content that resonates through humour, empathy and reliability.
Brands that foster genuine connections, and embrace video as a strategic tool, create more powerful long-form content that will drive affinity and demand.
- Prioritising effectiveness, measurement, and impact
As marketing's role in driving business growth becomes more pronounced, brands will place greater emphasis on metrics such as Return on Investment (ROI), attribution modelling, commerciality and lower funnel marketing.
Leveraging technologies that connect marketing activities to tangible business outcomes enables brands to refine strategies and demonstrate value.
This data-driven approach ensures that marketing efforts are not only creative but also commercially effective.
Sir Ken Robinson once said, “Creativity is the art of original ideas that have value”.
2025 is the year in which leading brands will embrace an evolving suite of innovative marketing levers to deliver emotional, functional and commercial value.
About Andisa Ntsubane
Vodacom Group’s managing executive: brand, marketing and communication, Andisa Ntsubane was recently named jury president for the Cannes 2025 Lions Scholarship jury. In 2024 he represented South Africa as the jury president for the Creative B2B jury.