It’s Not Just You - Age of Efficiency Accelerating

I’ve spoken with over a dozen business owners across platforms, brands, retailers and agencies. And the consensus view seems to be simple.

2025 is already not the growth oriented year we thought it could be.

In 2024 Nick Kaplan and I talked about the dawn of the Age of Efficiency. You could see it everywhere but I always pointed back to Walmart and Amazon leading the brigade — prioritizing margin dollar growth over revenue.

Then last year a lot of growth taken up by Amazon, Walmart, Shein and Temu. It leaves little for the rest of us.

Well the 2024 ship has come in and CFOs everywhere are asserting themselves even more.

In short - the Age of Efficiency has kicked into overdrive.

In many ways I’m not surprised this is how early 2025 looks. Many companies missed 2024 growth numbers which unless they were aggressively cutting means they missed profit forecasts by a wide margin.

I still see big projects starting but fewer. The replatforms in flight seem more like “have to” than “want to”. Which is tough news in the platform and system integrator world. The ones that are starting were many times supposed to start last year.

For brand builders this means it could also be a challenging year. CFOs demanding a pound of flesh from every department. “Brand-based” advertising starts to sound like a hope and a prayer in the Board room.

Cuts are certain, growth is uncertain. A new mindset is needed to focus those with the purse strings. Not one based on hope but one based on the company’s long term strategic plan.

First question: Why does this brand exist and how will it exist without investment and then growth?

Second question: what are our growth consumer segments?

Third question: How do we prioritize our resources to serve them?

Not that cuts will not happen - they will - but if there is no growth story there is no brand story.

Any monkey can cut costs indiscriminately. And if we let them, any monkey will. It’s up to change agents to make the case.