January 2026
The Ageless Advantage: Why Charisma Has No Expiration Date
What the return of the Most Interesting Man reveals about confidence, credibility, and why some brands age better than others. For a category under pressure—crowded shelves, shifting tastes, younger consumers drinking less—the instinct is often to chase novelty. New faces. New formats. New relevance cues. And yet, one of the most talked-about advertising moves this […]
What EACA Research Reveals About a Trust Gap Between CMOs and Agencies
For years, the marketing industry has spoken the language of partnership. Long-term relationships. Strategic collaboration. Shared ambition. New research from the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA), however, suggests a growing disconnect between what marketers say they want from agencies—and the conditions they create for those relationships to succeed. Based on responses from nearly 150 […]
Identity, Trust, and the New Rules of Nonprofit Marketing: Insights from Jon Lee of Lerma
Nonprofits are often the first to feel cultural change—not because they’re different from brands, but because the stakes are higher. When people give their own money rather than spend it, their motivations are more revealing, their expectations more demanding, and their tolerance for misalignment far lower. That’s why the shifts happening in nonprofit marketing today—around […]
Davos 2026 and the New Shape of Global Cooperation
As formal multilateralism weakens, smaller alliances are holding—while polarization, consumer anxiety, and geopolitical risk rise beneath the surface. Opening: A Tense Davos Moment Davos has always been a mirror of the moment. In past years, that mirror reflected confidence in globalization, faith in multilateral institutions, and—at times—an optimism about the power of collective action. Davos […]
AI Didn’t Disrupt Work. It Revealed What Matters.
Signals by Deborah Malone — helping leaders make sense of what’s changing, and what endures. Artificial intelligence is no longer hovering at the edges of marketing and advertising. It is moving from tool to infrastructure — embedded in how campaigns are planned, media is optimized, content is produced, and customer interactions are managed. That shift […]
Defying Drift: Why Deloitte’s Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach Say Leaders Must Hone, Not Transform
The authors of HONE explain how purposeful refinement—not constant reinvention—helps marketers sustain clarity, relevance, and organizational momentum amid exponential change. For years, business leaders—and marketers in particular—have been urged to disrupt, reinvent, and transform. But according to Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach, Principals at Deloitte and authors of HONE: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift, that […]
The Hidden Engines of Ad Growth: Why Advertising Is Outpacing Consumer Spending
Five forces quietly reshaping the ad market, according to Madison & Wall. For decades, advertising growth has tracked closely with consumer spending. The logic is straightforward: marketers invest to influence demand, so ad budgets rise and fall with consumption. But over the past several years, that relationship has fractured. Advertising revenues have grown significantly faster […]
Marketing in 2026: From Prediction to Reckoning
What marketers are questioning, reconsidering, and re-prioritizing as the year begins. For much of the past decade, marketing has been driven by anticipation. What’s next.What’s coming.What will change everything. As 2026 approaches, that posture is giving way to something quieter—and far more consequential. Across industry reports, cultural analysis, and conversations with senior marketers worldwide, a […]
SIGNALS FROM THE SEASON
What Christmas Revealed About Trust, Humanity, and Marketing As the holiday season fades and marketers begin shaping the year ahead, a few Christmas campaigns linger — not because they “won” the season, but because of how audiences reacted to them. These questions build directly on themes we explored earlier this season in our holiday advertising […]