21 Jan, 2026

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 […]

8 mins read

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 […]

4 mins read

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 […]

7 mins read

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 […]

6 mins read

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 […]

5 mins read

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 […]

5 mins read

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 […]

4 mins read

Why Big Ideas Stall — And How Marketers Can Become the Chief Alignment Officers

Susan Schramm on De-Risking Strategy, Moving People to Action, and Fast-Tracking Ideas in a Fragmented World When bold ideas stall, marketers are often the first to feel the friction. They see it in the brief, hear it in the rooms where decisions wobble, and feel it when a campaign that should work never gains traction. […]

8 mins read

LondonAI and the New Advertising Equation

How Michael Moszynski Wants to Redefine Creativity, Value, and Human Intelligence in an AI-Driven Era … When LondonAI launched, it didn’t introduce itself with glossy promises of transformation, magical savings, or instant innovation. Instead, it opened with a campaign showing all the things AI simply can’t do. It was witty, slightly irreverent, and intentionally sobering. […]

8 mins read

GEN MORE+ Signals: How Multigenerational Marketing Is Becoming a Brand Advantage

From Martha Stewart for American Eagle to Gwyneth Paltrow and Apple Martin for Gap to Coach’s cross-age resurgence, brands are learning that the strongest growth comes from connecting generations—not dividing them. Marketers have spent the better part of a decade fixating on generational labels—Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. Yet the most resonant campaigns of 2025 […]

6 mins read