A marketing note for 2026

Traditionally, December is the moment we look back on what the year has been like. Professionally it’s time to review projects. Personally, Spotify Wrapped shows us who we were in sound. Strava tells us how many hours we spent on the road or in the gym.

At the same time, December pushes us forward. Trend reports land in our inbox with the promise that this year finally everything will shift. Predictions pile up. New playbooks appear.

And to be fair: it looks like a lot really is changing. AI is no longer a novelty; it’s in the room with us, rewriting tasks and creating new ones. Audiences are quicker to decide and quicker to drift away. Channels evolve so fast you sometimes need a second coffee just to keep up. So yes, the context moves. The tools move. The expectations move. We aren’t imagining that.

What truly changes in marketing and what doesn’t

But when you zoom out from the noise, something surprising happens. Underneath all these shifts, the fundamentals stay exactly where they’ve always been. As the French saying goes: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The work still starts with understanding what people want, what they fear, what they remember. Brands still grow when they repeat themselves clearly and consistently. Creative still matters when it creates feeling, when it follows a trend but adds a little spice to it. Strategy still works when it narrows the focus.

The marketer’s real role in a fast-changing year

The tension between change and fundamentals is what defines the job now. If you ignore the change, you fall behind. But if you let the change sweep you off your feet, you lose the plot entirely. And that’s exactly what happens in many organisations. Someone reads a prediction and suddenly the tone of voice must shift, the brand needs a fresh identity, the content plan needs more “AI-driven bite.” Meetings are skipped because the urgency is there. Panic creeps in, disguised as ambition. 

This is where the real value of a marketer shows. Not in resisting what’s new, and not in blindly adopting it either, but in holding steady enough to make sense of it. Calm is not a refusal to adapt. Calm is the ability to look at change without letting it rewrite your entire compass. It’s the confidence to ask whether a new tool actually fits the brand, or whether it’s just another anxious moment packaged as innovation. It’s remembering that speed without orientation isn’t progress; it’s noise.

Why fundamentals still shape the future of marketing

Every so-called “revolution” of the past twenty years proves the point. Social arrived and the fundamentals stayed. Mobile arrived and the fundamentals stayed. Video took over and the fundamentals stayed. Now AI is reshaping the landscape, and again: the fundamentals stay. These fundamentals make decisions possible in a world where every week seems to offer a new direction.

The marketer of 2026 needs both steadiness and flexibility. Steadiness to protect the brand from being pulled in every direction. Flexibility to recognise when change demands a response. One without the other is incomplete. Together they form the balance that stops a brand from losing itself while the world accelerates.

2026 will favour marketers who stay calm and curious

So as you look at your Wrapped and your trend reports and everything in between, remember the simplest truth of this profession: the context will change again this year, and again the year after, and again after that. But the brands that thrive will be the ones whose marketers can navigate the movement without forgetting the map.

Hold the fundamentals. Adapt with intention. Stay calm in a fast year. That’s the real prediction for 2026.