Driving me round the trend ...

 

My trend-weariness was setting in already over three years ago, I see. This year, I’ve even looked at some of the AI summaries of trend reports and, maybe predictably, haven’t seen much to inspire me. It really does seem to be a load of (crystal) balls.

A new-ish genre in the trend oeuvre - in addition to category trends, consumer trends, media trends, tech trends et al - is marketing trends aka The Future of Marketing. One such is the Cap Gemini report I commented on a few weeks back.

Another is McKinsey’s State of Marketing Europe 2026.  In case you’re wondering how McKinsey work out the future of marketing in Europe, they do it by looking in the rearview mirror. Via a survey of 500 senior marketing decision-makers across 5 countries, backed up with a few depth interveiws with CMOs and academics. 

The stunning conclusion is that “marketing leaders are returning to mastering the basics but simultaneously advancing with utilizing modern tools.” Gosh. 

To get on in 2026, marketers must: Be Trusted, Be Effective, Be Bold. As opposed to ...

Golly gosh indeed. Who’d have thought it? 

There’s a rather hectoring tone about the report - in reference to AI: “Unless European marketing leaders rapidly change their attitudes ...”

Yes, tut, tut. Watch out before the cruel VUCA world gobbles you up, or the Burning Platform turns into an inferno.

The 50-page report has no less than 10 named authors (which doesn’t include Claude or ChatGPT), plus a list of industry experts as long as your arm, plus numerous McKinsey experts and colleagues. Not to mention all the others named who offered “editorial support."

There’s something “too many cooks” about this. It’s a report on an opinion poll, where the questionnaire has been designed by McKinsey. The 500 senior marketing decision-makers, I’m sure, work on a fascinating and diverse range of brands. And are, most likely, a varied bunch with some marked differences in character, in experience - and I’m sure in the way they approach marketing. 

Yet they’ve all been reduced to data points to make generalisations of the LCD sort, rather than HCF. Standardised to fit McKinsey’s frameworks, questions, flywheels, playbooks, agenda and whatever else.

The result is a rather bland, self-fulfilling prophecy. Seek and ye will find.

This stuff is all bad enough, as far as I'm concerned, when McKinsey does it.

But where McKinsey sucks, so do many lesser mortals, out to make a quick buck.

The author/s of this “Industry Pulse Report" report will remain nameless. The industry in question is digital media and advertising. 220 UK digital media experts were questioned in the survey that forms the basis of this - ahem - sales pitch.

But just look at this one chart:

The “experts” were asked what was suitable content to be adjacent to their brand. 

Around a quarter of these experts think it’s not just OK but positively “suitable” for your brand to be next to content that contains inaccurate information, mis/disinformation, or hallucinations. Or content that provides an ad-spammy or cluttered user experience. 

With the rise of synthetic respondents, I am beginning to wonder about the “experts” who find time to take part in these surveys.