Trends: 59 findings, with sources

CMOs are prioritising brand while planning fewer traditional brand campaigns than ever

CMOs are moving money toward brand while moving away from the format brand money used to buy: for the first time, under 50% are planning traditional brand campaigns. The budget is being reallocated to creator and video formats rather than to campaigns in the old sense.

Shares of content that helps people escape uncertainty more than tripled during 2025

Shares of content that helps people escape uncertainty rose 214% between the first and second half of 2025, measured across 1.6 trillion public shares on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Comedy is the most shared content category on social, ahead of motivation

Comedy was the most shared content category of 2025 with 173 billion shares globally; motivation was third with 119 billion.

Creativity now outranks possessions as a marker of status

Creativity is becoming a marker of personal status: 43% say how creative someone is defines a person's status, ahead of care for the planet (39%) and positive health metrics (36%). Status is migrating from what you own to what you can make.

Treatonomics: consumers trade down everywhere except the small joys

Austerity and indulgence coexist: 79% of global consumers are trading down (McKinsey), yet 38% of gen Z say they are spending more on themselves and 30% more on little treats - against 14% of gen X. VML calls it treatonomics: small affordable rewards as resilience infrastructure.

Two thirds follow creators for authenticity, and most feel a personal connection

68% of people follow creators because they seem authentic and relatable, and 60% feel a personal connection to them. The mechanism behind creator effectiveness is parasocial trust, not reach.

Škoda's Reddit-designed Octavia beat order expectations two and a half times over

Škoda let members of Reddit's Car Talk community vote on everything from the engine to the interior trim of a special-edition Octavia. Orders exceeded expectations by 255% and the campaign took a Cannes Lions Gold - co-creation as a commercial mechanism, not community theatre.

Boycotts move real numbers: Disney churn spiked four-fold in a single week

Consumer punishment is as measurable as fandom: Disney+ cancellations ran 436% above the usual churn rate in the week after Jimmy Kimmel's firing, 53% of US gen Z have taken part in brand boycotts (Statista), and Americana - the Middle East's largest fast-food franchise - saw net profits fall nearly 40% amid local boycotts.

GLP-1 use is reshaping spending in categories far from food

17% of people have taken or are taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, up from 12% a year earlier, and UBS forecasts 40 million users and $126 billion in sales by 2029. Second-order effects are already visible: US perfume sales to GLP-1 users rose 23% as suppressed appetite redirects the desire for pleasure into other categories.

Everyone thinks truth is dying - and most think they personally can spot the fakes

81% of people say the truth is an endangered concept these days and 71% believe AI is making it impossible to understand what is true - yet 68% are confident they personally can distinguish real from fake online. The confidence gap is exactly where misinformation lives.

Vaseline's creator-led hacks campaign lifted ad recall 15 points without a traditional brand campaign

Vaseline built a brand campaign entirely out of creator-made 'hacks' - the spice hack, the runner hack, the hair dye hack - run as partnership ads rather than as a traditional brand campaign. It lifted ad recall by 15.0 points and consideration by 4.2 points, and took a Cannes Lions Titanium plus two Grand Prix.

Optimising ads to in-store as well as online sales multiplies incremental purchases

Ads optimised against both online and in-store sales drove 2.8x more incremental purchases than the same ads optimised for web sales only.

When an algorithm mediates discovery, the machine is the first buyer to convince. A product whose data, imagery and attributes are illegible to a recommendation model never reaches the person who would have bought it - if the machine cannot see it, the human cannot buy it.

Business messaging is opened three times more often than email

Messages sent through WhatsApp are opened at an average rate of 79%, against 26% for email.

Three quarters of young consumers want a hand in shaping the brands they buy

75% of gen Z and millennials say they are interested in getting more involved with their favourite brands, from co-creation to influencing innovation. The audience for co-creation is not a niche of superfans - it is three quarters of the young market.

Five in six consumers want their money going to brands that reflect their values

84% of people want their money to go to brands that reflect their values, 79% say brands have a responsibility to take care of the planet and its people, and 74% say brands should make more effort to speak to people like them. The brand mandate skews to values and representation over price.

Seven in ten shoppers plan to buy off-price even if their budget grows

Value retail is booming alongside experience retail: 70% of customers plan to buy from outlets or off-price retailers in the next 12 months even if their budget increases (BoF-McKinsey), and US warehouse clubs grew revenue roughly 50% from 2020 to 2024. The middle of the market is what's emptying.

Seven in ten people now call loneliness an epidemic

70% of people globally now see loneliness as an epidemic, up from 67% a year earlier; WHO reports one in six people experienced loneliness. VML frames 'social health' - connection as a wellness category - as one of the biggest white spaces for brands in 2026.

Culture has gone multipolar: China ranks second on soft power, Bad Bunny was Spotify's most-streamed global artist (19.8bn streams), China's Ne Zha 2 became the highest-grossing animated film ever (~$2.2bn), and 76% of people say their cultural tastes are becoming more international. The reference points now come from Seoul, Shenzhen and San Juan as often as from LA.

Attention accumulated across repeated short exposures converts better than the same seconds in one impression

Attention accumulated across repeated short exposures outperforms the same attention delivered in one sitting. Viewers reaching five cumulative attentive seconds in a week converted 21% better than viewers who got five attentive seconds in a single impression; at ten seconds the advantage was 13%.

Most retail sales still happen in store and stay invisible to digital optimisation

73% of retail sales still happen in store, and the forecast for 2029 is 70%. The larger half of retail remains largely invisible to digital performance optimisation.

Half of all media time is now spent with user-generated content

50% of media time is now spent with user-generated content. A brand with no face in creator content is absent from half the market's media consumption.

Four in five shoppers still prefer a human over a bot

80% of people still prefer speaking with a human representative when shopping, and 87% value experiences that foster connection with themselves or others. The more synthetic the landscape gets, the more the human touchpoint differentiates.

People map the division of labour with AI by skill: AI is seen ahead on logic, strategy and operating machinery, humans ahead on empathy, caregiving, creativity, critical thinking and negotiation. 75% agree technology will never take creativity away from humanity - it's part of who we are.

Most people don't care if an ad was made by AI - but music gets judged harder

When an ad is primarily made by AI, 56% of people say it makes no difference to how they feel, 23% would like it more and 21% less. Music is judged more harshly: 32% would like an AI-made song less. Acceptance of AI creative varies by medium, not by principle.

Branded characters raise the odds of very large share gain by a quarter

Campaigns featuring branded characters ('fluent devices') are 23% more likely to generate very large share gain and 22% more likely to generate very large profit gain than the average campaign. The report pairs this with a revival of brand mascots as durable, ownable creator alternatives.

A White Lotus appearance lifted resort interest four-fold and dress sales seven-fold

Entertainment IP moves real commerce: after appearing in The White Lotus, Four Seasons Maui saw online interest jump 425%, and a Jim Thompson kimono dress worn on the show sold up 671% in four days. Placement inside story worlds now outperforms placement beside them.

Fewer than half strongly trust brands to tell the truth - and trust commands a premium

Only 44% of people strongly trust the brands they use to share accurate information, and 87% of customers will pay more for products from trusted brands (Salsify). Trust is scarce and priced accordingly - honesty is a competitive advantage, not a compliance line.

Gen alpha already influences four in ten dollars of US household spending

Gen alpha already steers 42% of US household spending - 49% in households earning over $100k - and 61% of gen alpha parents say their kids have the final say on which car they buy. Their own spending power exceeds $100 billion a year.