Patterns & Predictions: A Look Back
How 2025 turned out and how my predictions fared
We are in a season of predictions.
It’s easy to predict the AI bubble will pop in 2026, nor will I pretend to be a financial analyst.
I work at the intersection of technology and creativity for brands and organizations. I’m mulling over a few thoughts around relevance for them in 2026.
As I have been doing for the past few years, I will send out an analysis on what the future holds for brands in 2026. Here’s where I am, for now:
Advertising goes luxury
The new era of e-commerce
Quality over slop
And so on...
I’m still mulling over. Before finalizing this list for 2026, I am revisiting my predictions from December 2025.
What I said in 2025
The end of marketing as we know it: Nike isn’t back yet.
Revenge of the uncool: UNIQLO surpasses H&M.
The Great Pivot of the middle-aged: LinkedIn and Substack see their best year.
The 90-10 rule: Video production for social media feels the pressure.
Voice as interface: Voice becomes the next interface. Ray-Ban/Meta glasses sell millions. Apple Vision is announced.
Here’s the full version:
The report card is as follows:
✅ = Correct / Mostly correct
🔶 = Nuanced
❌ = Wrong
💟 = Too easy
1. The end of marketing as we know it: Nike isn’t back yet.
✅ Correct
My point wasn’t about Nike, per se. It was about the impact of marketing and advertising, which is no longer what it used to be.
As an example, I predicted that Nike would invest heavily in marketing, and it did (Nike):
After over two decades, it returned to the Super Bowl. It increased the spend in advertising and promotions by 9% ($4.7 billion), including a 15% surge in the final quarter of the fiscal year ending May 31, 2025.
Yet, it’s facing declining revenue and profits, and its stock price is down 21.5% in the past year. On Dec 20, 2024, it was $76.94. Today, on Nov 24, 2025, it’s at $62.52 (Google Finance).
It’s no longer the brand that sells the product; it’s the product that builds the brand. It appears Nike CEO Elliot Hill knows it.
Nike is showing signs of improvement. Its focus, or re-focus, on athletes and performance, rather than mass fashion as with Panda Dunks, feels like the brand I knew. In his flattering piece on upcoming product innovations, Mark Wilson of Fast Company says, “Thank god, Nike is feeling like Nike again.”
The summer of 2026 will absolutely be key for Nike. Why? The World Cup is happening in the US. What a gift.
2. Revenge of the uncool: UNIQLO surpasses H&M.
🔶 Nuanced
(Disclosure: UNIQLO is one of our clients.)
Trends are moving faster than ever. Things become popular and fade quickly. Chasing the cool is futile.
UNIQLO is trying to be cool by being anti-cool. It’s positioning itself against Zara, H&M, and Shein as “not fast fashion.”
By “surpass,” I meant in revenue. As of the latest record (Uniform Market)—Aug 31, 2025—UNIQLO is at $20.8 billion, trailing slightly behind H&M at $21.6 billion. However, it outpaced H&M in revenue growth and profitability in 2025 so far.
By the time we see the 2025 full-year results (likely Q2 2026), I believe my prediction will be correct.
3. The Great Pivot of the middle-aged: LinkedIn and Substack see their best year.
💟 Too easy
Both have shown strong growth in recent years, so this prediction may have been too easy.
4. The 90-10 rule: Video production for social media feels the pressure.
✅ Correct
OpenAI released the Sora app in fall 2025. It hit 1 million downloads in under five days, surpassing ChatGPT’s initial growth rate, the fastest technology adoption in history.
Public interest and social media buzz around Sora’s capabilities, including its ability to quickly generate convincing visual content, support its status as a leading AI-native content creation platform in 2025.
Ten years ago, a successful still-life photographer friend in the beauty and cosmetics industry lamented that clients were demanding 10x the amount of product photography for the same price. The same is happening in video production.
5. Voice as interface: Voice becomes the next interface. Ray-Ban/Meta glasses sell millions. Apple Vision is announced.
🔶 Nuanced
What I got right:
✅ In Q2 2025, the sales of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses tripled, signaling momentum, with projections for 5 million by year-end (Reuters).
What I got wrong:
❌ Voice as the primary interface is evolving alongside other modalities. In 2025, around 20.5% (Yaguara) of people globally use voice search, up from 20.3% in early 2024. The growth is more gradual than I thought.
❌ Apple didn’t announce Apple Vision, its smart-glass and cheaper Vision Pro. Instead, it announced Vision Pro 2 in October 2025 (Apple). The reviews have been lukewarm or even harsh (Reddit).
Next week, I’ll publish my Patterns & Predictions for 2026. If you haven’t, please sign up for The Intersection and follow me on LinkedIn.
You're too sophisticated and experienced to be predicting voice as the next interface :)
I feel like I've been hearing that prediction for years, and it keeps coming back to a principle of feedback - the visual gives us immediate feedback on what is happening. Also - we haven't had enough time to implicitly trust voice will work in different contexts. I use it, but in situations that are very particular for it. Love the newsletter, thank-you!