From Process to Progress: Why 2027 Will Finally Be Different

By Lee Brody, Founder- BGC Growth Strategies | VANTAGE POINTE

I am optimistic about 2027 and it’s a refreshing feeling.

For much of this decade there’s been little to celebrate in the brand-building business, but the frost seems to be thawing.

Facing fierce economic headwinds, businesses have often mistaken process for progress. Since the early days of the pandemic, the combative US presidential election, bloodshed in Ukraine and Middle East, unpredictable tariff exposure and rollercoaster markets, executives and boards have confronted the unknown with margin protection, operational efficiencies and cost-saving automations.

Above-the-line marketing has been relatively quiet, outside occasions like the Paris Olympics and 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Digital transformation. AI adoption. Agile transformation. Consolidation. Integration. Automation. Industries have spent this time redesigning how they work, with less focus on whether their actions do work to create enterprise value.

The result has been endless conversations about mechanics rather than outcomes. Structure versus purpose. We measure adoption rather than impact and celebrate activity over accomplishment.

As we prepare for 2027, that is changing. Not because artificial intelligence will become smarter, that is a given. Not because another wave of mergers and consolidations will arrive, bloated categories need to simplify to survive. Not because the economy will be more predictable, that’s not in the cards.

No, 2027 will be different because business will get back to business. The market will ask better questions and require better answers.

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The Evolution of Process

Recent success has been viewed through a one-dimensional lens – top-line revenue. Enterprise value does not register on size alone. History is littered with examples of companies that grew rapidly while simultaneously destroying trust, weakening purpose, and diluting differentiation.

Organizations that will define the new year and upcoming decade understand that, at the core, enterprise value is multi-dimensional. Enterprise value exists at the intersection of three forces:

Growth. Trust. Purpose.

That’s the triangle that must be consistently defined, refined, deployed and measured:

• Sustainable and healthy growth is the ultimate mandate. But it collapses without trust.
• Trust, the agentic priority, has the power to fuel or stall growth.
• Purpose without trust and growth, becomes table stakes.

For value to endure, all three measures must scale in unison. There are three imperatives that must be on every company’s agenda.

Imperative 1. Authority Beats Rankings

The first and perhaps most visible shift is obvious. For twenty-five years, marketers have optimized for search engine rank. The objective is simple enough: rank, web traffic, and await the next phase of the experience.

As CMO for several CPG brands I always was constantly pitched on SEO even though, as a retail brand, most of our customers never visited our website. They found us in real life, in real stores. But that was pre-pandemic.

Now the model that’s taken 25 years to understand is fundamentally disrupted by the introduction of large language models and the conversational nature of search.

Consumers increasingly rely on LLMs for informed search based on specific need states, appropriate fit, and objective validation. AI search has taken over the middle of the funnel. Global consulting giant Bain found that roughly 80% of users rely on AI summaries for searches, with 60% of those ending without visiting a brand website.

The impact of AI completely changes acquisition. Discovery is not defined by owned marketing properties alone. It is influenced by artificial systems that suggest brands with the requisite authority to signal trust and trigger recommendation. That pivot creates a different competitive framework and communications agenda.

Companies are working to understand platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google’s AI’s prompt feature not only to surface information but go deeper. Expertise and authority are the currency of agentic trust.

Branded websites and owned social channels are discounted in favor of third-party sources. Double-blind research, user testimonials, shopping ratings, and technical synergies occur within AI experiences. It makes sense then why Google, Yahoo, Bing and Safari have “news” feeds alongside their “shopping” and “images” navigation.

This transfer of authority demands an overhaul of how organizations deliver digital content. Winners will not be those who produce the most content, they will be the ones who produce the most trustworthy content, framed for scrapers and crawlers.

This Authority Priority relies on objective, consistent value signals, including:

• Verifiable executive expertise
• Transparent entity clarity (clunky for holding companies)
• Validation on third party platforms, along with owned properties
• Structured and parsible copy that responds to common language prompts
• Fact density is forcing business to operate more like media companies with continuous streams of knowledge, verification, detailed features and benefits.
• And, most importantly, authority well beyond owned channels.

We are moving from SEO to authority engineering. Leading organizations are creating standalone digital properties independent from traditional websites. The purpose is not promotional but knowledge sharing. Publishing regular updates, expert commentary, objective analyses, and educational content that signal credibility before a sale is ever contemplated.

The most valuable real estate in the agentic economy is not a page-one ranking, but deep thinking supported by facts, across properties, that surface and recommend products and services aligned with user needs.

Imperative 2. Growth Is Generational

The second imperative receives less attention but is equally significant.

America is getting older. According to the Census Bureau, the population of US residents aged 65 and older grew +60% from 2010 to 2025, the largest delta ever for that demographic. One in five Americans are in this cohort, and the nation’s median age continues to rise.

Marketing departments still operate on assumptions defined generations earlier. “Get them young and you’ll have them for life” has been the mantra. Youth is the obsession, with older cohorts isolated if they are recognized at all.  

That no longer reflects reality. The consumer economy depends on generational culture participation and decision-making. Parents influence children. Children influence parents. Grandparents influence households. Households influence communities. On and on it goes.

Purchasing flows in many directions for categories as disparate as travel, fitness, automotive, personal care and personal tech. Nearly every category has been affected by generational influence.

People are living and working longer, remaining vital and active, and participating in culture for far longer. The traditional view that aging is a series of static life stages is obsolete.

Americans are redefining what 65, 75, and even 85 looks like. They like what they see and, for the first time, have both the means and the time to indulge their “wants” as well as their “needs.” Wealth concentration, family support systems, and economic uncertainty only strengthen generational relationships and drive influence.

A Boomer helps fund a grandchild’s education, a Gen Z influences home technology and smart home purchases, an adventurous grandparent introduces travel destinations that become family rituals, and consumer brands are cemented as generational favorites.

To thrive, many brand owners will have to resist marketing to specific demographics and lean into multi-generation dynamics. The future belongs not to generic audience segments but to personalized ecosystems.

Imperative 3. Judging Consolidation by Results

The third imperative concerns a dominant business story of recent years: consolidation.

Few sectors have escaped it – consumer goods, healthcare, media, technology, and professional marketing services. Size is the response to uncertainty. If organic growth slows, strategic additions bring fresh revenue to the top line.

Perhaps no transaction better symbolizes this trend than the polarizing merger of marketing network behemoths Omnicom and Interpublic Group. The deal, announced late in 2024 and completed in 2025, created a combined company with $25 billion in revenue, +100,000 employees, and operational complexities unmatched in history.

The rationale was clear enough: greater capabilities, efficiencies, reach, technology expertise, clout, data, and commerce synergies. But those are all process factors, not value indicators. This was not a marriage of equals. Omnicom, the stronger of the two, basically bought its main competitor’s clients and talent. IPG, the weaker partner, entered talks from a position of slower growth and mounting pressures, making the deal an attractive lifeboat.

As we approach the new year, the conversation around consolidation is evolving in a more positive context. Success is not simple accounting of top-line growth, but whether combined organizations achieve greater impact on enterprise value to justify the investment.

• Did innovation increase?
• Did we improve customer outcomes and satisfaction?
• Did we deepen our expertise and authority for better solutions?
• Did we increase responsiveness and customer service?
• Did we strengthen our trust signals?

Today’s market is sophisticated. Top-line growth is not the sole measure of success. Size is not strategy and scale is not value.

Organizations that stand out are the ones strengthened by consolidation and free to set their own course. Not those that get larger, those that get better.

The Story of 2027

Business historians are unlikely to remember the early 2020s for automation, AI adoption, or merger activity alone. Those developments changed how organizations operate, but they are preparation. Whether organizations use them to create greater value is the measure.

Growth. Trust. Purpose.

Growth is sustainable, not borrowed. Trust that is earned, not manufactured. Purpose is demonstrated, not declared. These are the standards that drive investment activity, purchase decisions, recruitment, and authority.

That’s why 2027 feels different. The next chapter of this decade will be about proving outcomes and creating value. The standouts of the next decade will not necessarily be the biggest, loudest, or most technically adept. They will be the ones that convert new capabilities into results.

Because in the end, process attracts attention, but progress creates value.