Opening a new calendar is the second-best time to discard old ways of doing things and reinvigorate your strategy, your teams and yourself. The best time to shift is before everyone else does.

As 2025 begins, I look at the marketing landscape and see so much political, social and technological upheaval.

Given marketing’s role in how a brand’s identity, products and competitive positioning are understood, the art and science of business communications is on the front lines of all this change.

It’s not just economic volatility, global disruptions or the mainstreaming of generative artificial intelligence. Nor is it the impact of Gen Z’s spending and cultural boom on their millennial siblings, Gen X parents or baby boomer grandparents. It’s all of it happening everywhere and all at once.

I’ve spent a career watching marketing departments transform. Up to now, it’s all been gradual. Revolution is the most accurate description of what we are experiencing now.

From a business perspective, skills across all disciplines, from accounting to sales to engineering, need a refresh. Since marketing touches all parts of a business, it must be recognized for managing this turbulence.

Technical mastery of AI tools is crucial for all of us. Here, too, marketing leaders and their teams will be judged by how well they absorb a new set of hybrid skills that bridge the divide between human insight and technological advancement. 

Computational thinking: the new marketing literacy

Marketers don't need to become AI developers or learn to code, but they must think like programmers. Computational thinking—the ability to break down complex problems into logical sequences—is becoming as essential to marketing as art direction and copywriting were in the Mad Men era. 

Suppose your team needs to orchestrate a personalized customer journey across several touchpoints, incorporating real-time data and privacy compliance. The solution isn't in writing code but in thinking systematically about data flows, decision trees and user pathways. Marketers must be able to map these complex systems mentally, even if they never touch a line of code.

From data analysis to data intuition

We’ve heard the complaint at conferences and industry events for years: “We're drowning in data but starving for insights.”

While your analytics team can crunch numbers, the real value lies in interpretation. You have to be able to turn those numbers into credible, accessible stories that drive positive actions from clients to consumers. This isn't about learning another visualization tool; it's about developing what can best be called “data intuition.”

It’s also about developing new habits. For example, I don’t want to work with someone who simply reads a report. I want someone to question the assumptions behind the data, such as asking why a campaign resonated with consumers in the Northeast but fell flat in the Sunbelt.

I want to hear from someone who can clearly explain the underlying cultural factors that might explain engagement patterns and chart a course of action. This level of interpretation requires a blend of analytical thinking and cultural awareness. That’s an example of “human-centered” intelligence that AI cannot (currently) replicate. 

Cross-cultural fluency

Like politics, all marketing is local. That’s true even in an age when e-commerce clicks are commonplace for all consumers. It’s tempting to imagine that cross-cultural communication is just nice to have. However, understanding how consumers in varied locations act on marketing messages is a matter of survival and differentiation. After all, your competitors are just as responsive to always-on consumers, too. 

But here's what most marketing leaders get wrong: They confuse translation with localization and localization with true cultural fluency.

You can’t see Southeast Asia with a Western marketing lens.

In a world that seems to be turning faster and faster, people hold more tightly to established cultural identities as an antidote to the confusion and uncertainty swirling around them. Marketing teams must respond to this challenge by communicating with a clear context. Cultural fluency means understanding not just language and customs. It’s demonstrating a genuine, relevant understanding of the underlying values and motivations that drive consumer behavior in different markets.

Practical skill development: moving from theory to practice

Here are specific exercises I've seen work in real marketing departments: 

For computational thinking, start with customer journey mapping exercises that incorporate multiple variables and decision points. Challenge your team to identify every possible pathway and outcome, just as a programmer would. This builds the mental muscles needed for complex problem-solving without requiring technical expertise. 

To develop data interpretation skills, regularly practice what I call “assumption challenging.” Take your most successful campaign and list every assumption you made about why it worked. Then systematically question each one, looking for alternative explanations. This develops the critical thinking needed for genuine data interpretation.

For cross-cultural fluency, implement regular cultural immersion exercises. Have team members research and present deep dives into specific markets, going beyond surface-level demographics to explore cultural values, communication styles and consumer behaviors. Better yet, establish regular conversations with your international counterparts or partners. 

There’s a reason for honing these disparate skills on a marketing team, and it all goes back to democratization. 

The easy availability of data, tech and AI has leveled the playing field. Marketing teams are still expected to deliver big ideas that, ideally, deliver higher revenue and brand impact. So, no matter how complex tech becomes, the need to produce original work that drives business growth will never change.