The A to Z of marketing trends for 2026
2026 will be the year in which marketing continues to evolve within an increasingly complex landscape. As technology keeps accelerating and consumer expectations continue to evolve, it is crucial for brands to act strategically, credibly, and with a future-oriented mindset. Whether it concerns the thoughtful deployment of AI, strengthening brand trust, or building valuable customer experiences across all touchpoints, the trends for 2026 offer ample opportunities to achieve sustainable growth. In this A-to-Z guide, Comma brings together the key marketing trends for the year ahead, providing clear insight into the developments shaping the future of marketing and helping brands remain relevant and distinctive.
Anti-algorithm - Break the feed with intentional discovery
What once was a useful, invisible tool increasingly feels like a filter that narrows our view. In 2026, algorithms push consumers through feeds, recommendations, and ‘for you’ pages into predictable patterns of doomscrolling and copy-paste lifestyles. The consumer response is increasingly: “How do I turn this off?” or “How do I take control back into my own hands?”
People are once again looking for serendipity, discovery, and control over their digital identity and data. Brands that are transparent about their algorithms - and allow users to choose, tweak, or opt out - build trust and loyalty. Those who follow only the logic of reach and efficiency become noise in an endless, optimized feed.
B-Corp - The trust mark era
In a world calling for authenticity, a ‘green’ logo is no longer sufficient. The B Corp movement (where the ‘B’ stands for Benefit for all) marks the shift from profit maximization to impact-driven entrepreneurship. Companies carrying this independent certification meet the highest standards in terms of social and environmental impact. At Comma, we don’t just talk about this evolution, we are part of it ourselves. As a certified B Corp, we embed this societal mission into our own DNA and that of our clients. It is not a logo you place on your website, but a reflection of how you truly do business: governance, employees, customers, environment, and community. It attracts top talent and builds a fan base of conscious consumers who demand transparency.
Creative excellence - Humans set the standard
Creative excellence is the response to a world filled with AI-generated mediocrity. When everyone can create a lot, quickly, the question shifts to who still dares to create something truly excellent. It is about clear ideas, unexpected perspectives, work that is culturally relevant and strategically aligned with the brand. AI may accelerate production, but people determine the standard: framing, emotion, humor, and timing. Brands that consistently choose this higher standard build recognizable codes that stick, even in an endless scroll.
Datacentric - Better and faster decisionmaking
Datacentric work in 2026 means understanding first, then creating. No longer steering on gut feeling or isolated KPIs, but on an integrated data view across channels. From brand awareness to sales funnel performance and community behavior: everything feeds into one strategic source. This enables brands to detect more quickly which content, channels, and propositions truly deliver value. Datacentric work is not about dashboards, but about culture: marketers, sales teams, and management look at the same reality and make faster, better decisions. Creativity does not become less free, but much more focused.
EEAT principe - A user-first sanity check
E-E-A-T is not a score or checklist, but a sanity check for content and brand messaging from the user’s perspective. It forces brands to take four interconnected principles seriously.
Experience and Expertise require visible knowledge, supported by practical experience, data, and concrete examples. Authoritativeness is built through focus on a clearly defined domain and consistent visibility via experts, media, and partnerships. Trustworthiness follows when expertise and authority are supported by transparent behavior, clear source attribution, and openness about choices and the use of AI. In this way, E-E-A-T connects SEO, thought leadership, and brand building into one framework centered on lasting credibility.
Feverdream - Surreal storytelling: brands as alternate realities
In 2026, brands increasingly move toward ‘feverdream content’: hyper-visual, almost hallucinatory narratives that force scroll-stops in overstimulated feeds. Contrasts, unexpected combinations, and surreal storytelling attract attention, but also carry risks.
Without a strategic foundation, it becomes a spectacle without meaning. The challenge is to deploy feverdream as a narrative tension around a clear core story. Brands that dare to alienate while clearly communicating what they stand for create memorable brand assets that linger long after the swipe.
Generation Alpha’s running 16 - A new rulebook generation
In 2026, the oldest wave of Generation Alpha is around 16 years old: old enough to make independent choices, young enough to completely rewrite the rules. The mistake brands made with Gen Z, treating them as mini-millennials, risks being repeated if Alpha is seen as ‘Gen Z, but younger.’ This generation grows up with AI as standard, different educational and family structures, and an entirely distinct media pattern. That requires investment in data, youth panels, and continuous research. Generation Alpha deserves its own strategy, not a recycled Gen Z deck.
Hyperpersonalization - Relevance without the creepiness
In 2026, consumers expect brands not only to know them, but to understand them. Hyperpersonalization goes beyond using a first name in an email: it combines context, behavior, preferences, and timing. Content, offers, and delivery adapt in real time. At the same time, sensitivity around data and privacy continues to grow. The challenge is achieving maximum relevance within clearly defined, transparent boundaries. Brands that get this right create the feeling of a personal concierge rather than a stalking algorithm. Each interaction becomes less of a campaign and more of a dialogue, resulting in higher conversion and stronger brand preference.
Invisible AI - Creating frictionless customer experiences behind the scenes
In 2026, the smartest AI lives under the hood. Shoppers do not want an ‘AI experience’, they want to be helped quickly, seamlessly, and personally. As long as brands are transparent about data usage and the value clearly benefits the customer, the technology itself is secondary. Invisible AI monitors self-checkout, inventory, pricing, and customer flows in real time, identifies friction points, and optimizes processes without drawing attention to itself. No flashy features, just shorter queues, fewer errors, and greater convenience. The customer is in the spotlight and AI runs the lights backstage.
Journalistic trust – Proof as positioning
As brands become publishers, journalistic credibility becomes a competitive advantage. In 2026, audiences expect sources, context, and nuance, not just hollow opinions or slogans. Journalistic trust is built through fact-checking, transparency about interests, giving experts a voice, and clearly distinguishing between content and commerce. Whitepapers, podcasts, and articles become stronger when approached as editorial work rather than pure marketing. This builds brands that are not only seen, but believed.
KPI’s – Metrics that matter
KPIs are shifting from isolated figures to a compact, strategic scoreboard. In 2026, brands measure less, but measure better. Instead of endless metric lists, they work with a sharp set that connects brand, marketing, and sales through mental availability, consideration, sales opportunities, and long-term customer value. KPIs become scenario levers: what happens if we double X, where does friction occur if Y stalls? By linking dashboards to clear actions, reporting is no longer a monthly obligation but a weekly control room for growth.
Layout intelligence - Interfaces that think
Layout intelligence transforms design from manual work into intelligent orchestration. In 2026, AI tools enable automatic layouts, variant creation, and channel-specific versions from a single source file. Brands gain speed, but the real advantage lies in learning loops: which combinations of visuals, copy, hierarchy, and calls-to-action perform best? Designers evolve into system thinkers, defining grids, components, and brand logic that AI can work with. The result is a hybrid workflow where brand consistency increases while production and media costs decrease.
Monetizing expertise – Knowledge as a service
In 2026, expertise becomes a standalone revenue model rather than merely a means to sell hours or products. Clients want access to knowledge and thinking: advisory memberships, closed communities, deep-dive sessions, niche newsletters, and toolkits.
What used to be ‘free advice’ in pitches and proposals becomes structured into clear formats with a defined value proposition. For brands, this means inventorying knowledge, commercializing it, and clearly defining what is free and what is paid. This builds authority while creating a recurring revenue stream.
No click search - Winning the answer box
In 2026, zero-click searches continue to grow: users see the answer to their question directly in the search results and no longer click through. This makes brands less dependent on websites and more dependent on visibility within the search ecosystem. Structured data, FAQ content, how-tos, and strong snippets become essential. Your brand must be readable for both people and machines. When expertise is clearly structured, the chances of appearing at the top – or as a featured answer – increase. Zero-click does not mean ‘zero impact,’ but rather delivering value before the click, so your brand is top of mind when the real decision is made.
Omnichannel presence - Consistent identity everywhere
Omnichannel is no longer about a checklist of channels, but about one continuous brand experience. From social ads to webshop, showroom, customer service, and invoice: tone, visuals, data, and promises must align. Customers expect recognition regardless of where they enter or return. This requires integrated systems and a clearly defined brand strategy. Brands that orchestrate channels instead of managing them separately build trust and efficiency. Each touchpoint reinforces the same story, adapted to context and device.
Psychographics - Age misleads, mindset matters more
Age alone says little about behavior or preferences. In 2026, brands therefore shift from demographics to psychographics, focusing on values, motivations, attitudes, and lifestyle.
A 55-year-old gamer may have more in common with a 22-year-old founder than with peers in the same postcode. By segmenting around motivations such as status, security, growth, or community, value propositions and content become much sharper. This requires deeper research into data and personas that go beyond “female, 35–44, with children.” Brands that update their segmentation avoid generic campaigns and gain more relevant mental space.
Quality media resurgence – Value over views
After years of endless scroll feeds, consumers in 2026 increasingly return to quality media with editorial standards and context. They want less noise and more meaning. For brands, this means moving away from random impressions and investing in safer, stronger environments where attention truly counts. Premium inventory, podcasts, niche publications, and newsletters regain value as brand-building channels. They may be more expensive per contact, but cheaper per impact. Brands that dare to choose quality over quantity build credibility in a media landscape that is learning to differentiate again.
Retail - from intent to behavior
Retail shifts from search to behavior. Customer journeys increasingly start in AI assistants or recommendation systems, where algorithms decide what is shown rather than explicit search queries. Intent is inferred from behavior: what people view, compare, save, buy, and how often they return. Success in this GEO-driven landscape means moving from being found to being recommended, based on behavioral, contextual, and transactional signals. This requires clean, machine-readable data and catalogs, as well as discovery moments via shoppable content, live commerce, and smart notifications. Those who understand and nurture behavior are not only found, but recommended at exactly the right moment.
Social media is far from dead
Every year, social media is declared dead, while people spend more time on it than ever. The landscape has simply changed. Organic reach has declined, but social has evolved into a search engine, customer service channel, community space, and shop in one.
The real shift lies in less ad-hoc posting and more deliberate formats: social search, DM-based service, creator collaborations, and social commerce. Social is no longer just a channel, but a layer across the entire customer journey.
Trust as a profit driver - Driving margins through consistency, care, and contextualization
Margins are increasingly driven not just by efficiency and scale, but by trust. In a “bring-it-to-me” economy, people choose organizations that genuinely make their lives easier: predictable quality, clear agreements, fast and human support, and solutions that fit their context.
This requires the three C’s: consistency across all touchpoints, care through visible attention and empathetic service, and contextualization of offer, price, timing, and channel. With strong segmentation, smart execution, and AI supporting end-to-end delivery, trust becomes scalable and a direct driver of margin, loyalty, and customer lifetime value.
Unpolished content - Realness that reads
The boundary between ‘official’ brand content and spontaneous creator content continues to blur. In 2026, formats that feel like voice notes gain traction: lo-fi, fast, and honest.
Think behind-the-scenes moments, first takes, rough sketches, and unfiltered Q&A’s. The goal is not sloppiness, but intentional imperfection within clear brand guardrails, featuring real people and real opinions. This makes brands more accessible and more credible.
Visual and voice search – A brand must make sense of the senses
Search is increasingly moving beyond keyboards. In 2026, visual and voice search become mainstream: people point their camera at a product or simply ask their device a question.
This requires different brand choices: recognizable packaging, clear product information, structured data, and content that is both speakable and scannable. Brands that already optimize for visual and voice-driven search will secure leading positions in future SERPs (search engine results pages).
Work-anywhere brand culture - How you work becomes the story
Hybrid work is the norm, but many brands still fail to tell a strong story around it. In 2026, how you collaborate becomes a crucial part of your brand, especially in employer branding. Offices evolve into true brand hubs rather than mandatory desks. At the same time, tools, rituals, internal content, and leadership style must consistently express the same brand values, whether people work from home, on the move, or in the office.
XR - Experiences you can step into
AR, VR, and mixed reality shift from gimmicks to everyday UX layers in 2026. From scanning packaging to virtual showrooms and in-home product demos, XR makes abstract promises tangible. It is not about adding a novelty feature, but about removing friction in decision-making and experience. Brands that connect XR to real customer needs—rather than chasing a wow effect—build experiences that are both memorable and useful.
Youth culture – Youth guiding brands instead of brands guiding youth
Youth culture can no longer be ‘targeted’ from the outside, it actively shapes brands from within. Trends emerge in micro-scenes, subcultures, and niche communities, often months before brands notice them. In 2026, young audiences expect brands to listen, participate, and give credit rather than position themselves at the top. Relevance requires treating creators and communities as equal partners, with space for remixing and critique. Brands that dare to let go, test, and give back become part of the culture rather than noise layered on top of it.
Zero waste strategy - Sustainability that makes sense
Zero waste evolves from a sustainability label into a business logic. In 2026, forward-thinking brands adopt circular thinking, designing products, packaging, content, and processes for reuse, repair, recycling, or repurposing. This reduces costs, strengthens brand narratives, and aligns with the expectations of customers and talent. Marketing plays a key role by transparently explaining how the value chain works, which choices are made, and what impact they have.
