CATÓLICA-LISBON

We live in an era in which marketing is reinventing itself at an almost choreographed pace, driven by consumers who shift interests with the same ease with which they move between platforms. In 2025, global marketing investment surpasses USD 830 billion, according to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey, a figure sufficiently significant to collectively reassure all marketers: if we continue to invest so heavily in communication, it is because we remain convinced that someone, somewhere, is still listening. This number reflects not only the scale of the field, but also the enduring strategic belief that communicating better remains the most effective way to grow in a saturated market, even as that market appears to be slowly withering.

 

Despite the remarkable progress of recent years, a difficult irony persists. The more complex strategies become, the clearer it is that we remain constrained by deeply human dilemmas. Channels multiply, messages expand, meticulously designed campaigns emerge, and almost surgical segmentation is deployed, all intended to ensure that the right message reaches the right person at the right moment. Yet the more refined the plan, the harder it becomes to fulfill what is essential: capturing attention, sustaining relevance, and communicating with authenticity in an ecosystem that rewards speed, novelty, and volume, while regarding depth with the same suspicion reserved for anything that demands too much effort.

 

As 2025 draws to a close, this paradox becomes impossible to conceal. Never have we had so much data, so many insights, and so many channels at our disposal, yet never has it been more challenging to understand what all of this means and, more importantly, what truly deserves to be developed. We therefore enter 2026 with an unavoidable strategic imperative: the ability to filter, prioritize, and assign meaning to an informational overload that grows faster than our patience. In an environment saturated with stimuli and metrics, focus returns almost through exhaustion to what has always been fundamental: understanding not only what people do, but why they do it, even when such understanding does not fit neatly into a framework or dashboard.

 

It is within this context that certain trends cease to be fleeting and instead assume the role of structural pillars of marketing practice. Among the movements gaining depth, three stand out. The first concerns the role of artificial intelligence as a strategic co-pilot. After a period in which AI was celebrated primarily for its ability to produce more, faster, and at greater scale, it now enters a phase in which it guides pathways, models scenarios, anticipates risks, identifies patterns invisible to human intuition, and suggests strategic directions with a rationality that is both impressive and, at times, unsettling. Paradoxically, the more sophisticated it becomes, the more evident the need for human judgment to decide when to follow it and when to challenge it.

 

The second movement relates to the expansion of digital commerce into a new phase of emotional and geographic maturity. E-commerce is no longer merely a convenient channel; it evolves into a global ecosystem in which physical and digital experiences intersect seamlessly. Online purchasing increasingly represents entry into immersive journeys where personalization, sensory environments, real-time interactions, and intelligent logistics systems converge to create near-instant experiences. Geography ceases to function as a boundary, and proximity becomes defined by relevance a concept that, interestingly, remains far easier to proclaim than to execute.

 

The third movement consolidates itself in the domain of digital sensory branding. Brand identity no longer depends exclusively on static visual elements; it expands into immersive environments in which sound, texture, movement, and interactivity construct richer symbolic experiences. Identity becomes a living, adaptive, and responsive organism, inviting consumers to feel the brand rather than merely recognize it an important advance in a context where, for years, recognition was mistakenly equated with relationship.

 

This, then, is the moment when these transformations cease to be strategic options and instead become criteria for survival. The true challenge does not lie in adopting trends, but in integrating them with vision, coherence, and a measure of common sense. In a market where everything is measurable, replicable, and quickly surpassed, competitive advantage does not stem from doing more, nor even from doing it first, but from doing it better secure in the knowledge that the consumer does not need an explanation to immediately grasp what our value proposition as a brand truly is.