The 12 Trends of Christmas: Marketing in an age of acceleration
2025 has been a year of extraordinary change for marketers. From AI-driven workflows to the resurgence of authentic storytelling, the pace of transformation is rewriting the rules of engagement.
In this special festive wrap-up edition of The CMO Show, host Mark Jones counts down the 12 trends shaping marketing leadership as we head into 2026.
Join us for a masterclass in clarity, creativity and context as we explore what it means to lead in an era of acceleration. From personalisation at scale to ethics as a non-negotiable, these insights will help you navigate the next wave of marketing innovation with confidence.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Kate Zadel and Kirsten Bables and audio engineers Ed Cheng and Daniel Marr. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
It's the festive season, and here in Australia, that means one thing: It's getting hot. Of course, it's been a hot year for marketing, too, but hot in a different kind of way. More intense, more confronting, and more "Wow. Can somebody please slow this thing down for a second?" Because the real question this year is, "How do we make sense of a world that's beginning to spin faster than it ever did?" Or in the spirit of the season, we might be asking, "Is it just me or is marketing getting a bit hotter right now?"
Hey there, it's Mark Jones, your host of the CMO Show, and this is a special festive wrap edition. It's my annual best-of. And it's where you get to hear from me talking about all of the trends, topics, and ideas that we've discovered throughout this amazing year. And just to be a bit different, I thought we'll do a top 12 countdown, the top 12 trends that shaped marketing leadership in 2025. And of course, it's the season, so it needs to be the 12 trends of Christmas. Think of it as what my CMO said to me, but don't actually sing. Or, I mean, if you want to, that's fine, but I won't be doing that. You can be rest assured.
So, whether you are a marketing leader, a brand storyteller, or a business strategist, these are some of the signals that we've been paying attention to here at the CMO Show. So, let me encourage you to grab your beverage of choice, and let's dive in. So let's kick off the 12 trends of Christmas, the 2025 edition. Number 12. Coming in at number 12 is B2B buyers trust people and not brands. Of course, we've seen this for many years, and we know that this sort of comes in and out. But credibility in B2B always comes down to networks. I had a great chat with Brendan Wong from LinkedIn, the news editor over there. He had this great line. When it comes to decision-making, they'll go to their network, people go to their networks, but it's the personal experiences that help someone make their final decision. So, the implication here, of course, is that organic advocacy matters more than ever, organic meaning us humans, of course, but these internal experts. And from my own personal reflections, I've been to a lot of conferences this year, and the marketing that a lot of brands are doing in Australia, New Zealand, and North America, too, very much focused on physical events, roundtables, executive forums, all sorts of places where B2B buyers can meet each other, where you can get a combination of inputs from a brand and customers. So, to balance out the messages I found is something that's really taken off this year.
Number 11. Number 11, brand building isn't dead. In fact, it's essential. Another swings and roundabouts thing. But it was interesting that in this year, when we've been obsessed with speed, some leaders reminded us to slow down. Really enjoyed my conversation with the CMO at McDonald's India, Arvind R P, and he had this great perspective: "Marketers need to honour the legacy while innovating within it." Now, McDonald's, as we all know, is an incredible legacy. Imagine being the CMO of McDonald's. Well, he said it's all about continuity, doing things better, and reimagining within the boundaries of something built over time. So, patience can be a strategic advantage. But also, when you have the constraints of a legacy brand, it then forces your creativity into a tighter space, yes, but it also can create some different opportunities. And we've seen that through other conversations as well where people are looking at how to stand on the heads and shoulders of people that have gone before them. The reason I like this particular trend is that it is a little bit counter to traditional wisdom in CMO land. It's no secret that the lifespan, well, it sounds a bit harsh, but it's no secret that the average tenure of a CMO, I should say, is between 18 and 24 months. And historically, they come through, new CMO turns up and throws the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. So, this is a great reminder to really think about the long-term brand-building side of things and to invest in that brand but with perhaps your own flavour.
Number 10 on our list, audiences are hiding inside closed networks. Really enjoyed my chat with Ryan Ferguson from Snap, the local MD here in Australia, New Zealand. And we are finding a trend with Millennials and Gen Z that they're increasingly avoiding the public internet, at least as far as it relates to active conversations. So, really exchanging a lot of value. The quote that he had was, "As users shy away from the public internet, they're finding quieter corners of communities." Now, there are plenty of private walled-garden networks out there. Of course, it's been going on for quite some time. But in the case of Snap, where they're trying to monetize that for not just the consumer but increasingly looking at B2B audiences, it mirrors what we've seen in other pockets of the internet as well, and particularly thinking about forums. So, one of the outtakes for CMOs is, yes, broadcasting and above the line has its place, but also start thinking about how to integrate or be part of discrete communities that are of particular interest to you. So, it might be important to find these places and actually become part of those communities or host them for yourselves so that we can balance out the opportunity of these two ways of thinking. Closed networks, who knew?
Number 9 is the content debt. And I think about this as the silent killer, or at least maybe it's the thing that's holding you back in the enterprise as it relates to content and your brand storytelling. It is, of course, no secret that everybody has too much content. But the issue is, though, it's about to become a big liability in the age of AI. Really great conversation with Deloitte's Debra Taylor, and she's a partner over there working in the content space. And she said that "We've been treating the web like it's a massive filing cabinet and 'It'll be fine.'" Now, in truth, brands need clean, authoritative sources of truth to feed into AI, and you're most likely aware that generative search engine optimization or GEO, so generative engine optimization, is the new hot thing, because we are seeing a real shift in the way that people go after information. We're only looking at the information that's presented to us in these gen AI platforms, which, of course, are sucking up data from the web, from SEO. So, we want to make sure that the information we're presenting on our brand in those platforms comes from strong, authoritative sources, that it's clean and clear, and that we're feeding the right information. And if you're not feeding the right information out there into these platforms, of course, you're not doing your brand any service. But also, and then, internally in your organisation. Lots of conversations this year about this age-old problem of not just too much data, but it's all messy, and data hygiene. I've had many conversations with CMOs and CIOs and CXOs this year about this legacy problem of the internal filing cabinet, so to speak, of all our data, data hygiene. I don't think we'll ever fix the data hygiene problem, to be honest with you, but it's going to have to be something that we stay focused on because of the imperative to get it right for AI.
Okay, making progress on the list, getting into the top 8. Personalization becomes full context narrative. And so, this is where we start saying in our emails, it says hi, in brackets first name. It's actually about tailoring an entire journey and often for buying groups. Now, the customer journey is a new thing only in the context of this buying groups behaviour. So, a great chat with Duncan Egan from Adobe. And he was talking about everything we do is targeted for these accounts and personas. Narrative orchestration, being able to orchestrate an entire customer journey through all of the different touchpoints, being able to orchestrate these workflows and the content and personalise it is extraordinarily complex at one level, but also simple in the sense of "Where are we taking the customer? What's the experience we want them to have? And how can we use these tools to improve that, to really speed up the process of developing the workflows, being able to serve up the relevant content at scale in a very dynamic way?" Huge focus in the coming years, I suspect, will be around this, the content supply chain, looking at this full context narrative and how personalization can become closer and closer to this reality that, to be honest, we've always hoped it would be.
Number 7, the return of authentic storytelling. And I'm not just saying this because I love storytelling and I know how critical it is to all of our marketing efforts, but we have seen some really interesting conversations this year around mass content, really taking on board a strategic angle from us humans, right? Looking at real human truths. One of the great outstanding ideas that we have from the advertising community, thinking about campaigns that are imbued, if you like, with a human truth. A great chat I had with Heaps Normal's Tim Snape, and he was talking about an example where they had a campaign built around doing your best. The human truth is this idea that everybody is trying to do their best. It's an empowering message. And so, it was a simple insight that led to a two-year campaign. Wellness is about doing your best, not sticking to hard-and-fast rule, which, of course, in the Heaps Normal case is non-alcoholic beer brand. So being able to say, "Look, you're going to do your best within the context of non-alcoholic beers, and that's okay." And this, of course, is a brand that is always focused on its community, on staying connected to people. And so, when you take a leaf out of their book or steal a leaf from their tree, you start to get to this idea that if we encourage customers exactly where they're at, if we understand the human truth that drives them, we'll go a lot further.
Number 6, ethics and social impact are no longer optional. I had a great chat with Karthi Marshan, And what I liked about his perspective is that he said, "We have the added responsibility to use marketing not just to sell products but to embed forward-moving ideas for society." If you are a long-time listener or you know anything about us at ImpactInstitute, you'll know that we love social impact. The truth that it's founded on, though, is that all organisations have a responsibility to the wider community as one of their key stakeholders. And that always begins with, of course, your team and how you foster social impact in your organisation because it flows out. But we have a responsibility, too, as marketers to be reflecting the conversations in society, to be building in the core positive narratives about kindness and care and all these other great ideas, which we know, through our work in social impact, drives commercial outcomes as well as helping social outcomes. We always love to align brands that adhere to values that we share. So, there's a culture-change piece here for marketers. Leaders are expected now to move their culture forward as brand leaders and the communities in which they participate, to positively contribute to that as well and not simply just respond to it.
Number 5, as we get closer and closer to number 1. And the marketer becomes the revenue leader. This is something I've been tracking for quite a few years now, too, I should say. We used to try and talk about sales and marketing being the same. They're, of course, very distinct disciplines. What's changed, though, is a very clear perspective that marketers have to drive business value and then they're no longer a cost centre. And all of the conversations I've had this year have really aligned around this idea of creating value for the business in multiple ways. Adobe's Chris Young, had a good chat to him. And he captured this shift pretty perfectly. He said, "Every marketer represents the customer to the rest of the business, but they're also responsible for ROI and for impact." Other marketers I spoke to talked about the fact, they continue to be in control of their budgets. Sure, they might need to justify how those budgets are being spent, but they're holding these different pieces together. "How do I spend my money that's going to make an impact, that it's responsible in the context of customers and community, and it's also going to continue to drive ROI?" Of course, AI is helping us to get a lot better at understanding that ROI for connecting those workflows to follow that attribution trail through the organisation. So, the good news is that marketers are now core to transformation.
Number 4, trust and governance are strategic assets. It is an incredible change we're going through, of course, with AI. It brings all of this power. But there's also incredible risk. Econsultancy's Jim Clark, when I spoke to him, he talked about being upfront and clear with customers because that goes a long way towards building trust. Of course, he was talking about Adobe's annual Digital Trends, which will be coming out again soon in 2026. But in an era of hallucinations, it's quite clear that your brand needs to be a source of truth. And owning that as a CMO is increasingly critical. Truth in terms of the brand values and truth in terms of how communities and your customers see your brand and have shared values, and being able to reflect that and to build that trust up over time. And as we see a look at... We're heading into an age where social media controls are getting tighter. We're seeing emerging conversations around how to get better governance of AI systems. And so, being able to confidently communicate what you're doing around trust and governance, while, at the surface level, doesn't seem very exciting, it's not as fun as a lot of the creative stuff, but really, this is the essential hygiene stuff that you need to be able to build a long-term sustainable brand.
Number 3. So we're on the podium. We're close. I'm mixing my Christmas and racing metaphors, but that's okay. Transformation fails without people. Who knew? Really great idea that I was reminded of this year of the three pillars, or, the trifecta, if you like, people, process, and technology. Now, if you break one of those, people, process, and technology, everything fails. And I had a great chat with Ravi Santhanam from HDFC Bank in India. He had this great comment, "No amount of communication is over-communication." This is an old truism for those of us with communication and PR backgrounds, too. But clear communication, over-communication, and being able to make sure that very simple, short, sharp, clear lines are cutting through from a messaging point of view in all aspects of your marketing is particularly critical at a time when many organisations are going through a different take on transformation projects. So, there's AI-driven transformation. And we're looking at how to grow across multiple geographies and being able to use different AI workflows in some of the contexts that we've talked about. Clarity of communication is key.
Okay, getting closer and closer. Number 2, customer experience becomes effortless clarity. Customer experience is, again, right at the top of our list, of course. Shifting to frictionless value creation is something I've been fascinated for a while. As consumers, we're always looking for the easiest, simplest way to make a transaction, to get anything done. So forms, for example. And I had a chat with TSB Bank's Emma Springham. She said, "My job is to make it effortless, to prompt customers to take the right action at the right time." For her, she's thinking about financial literacy, but also helping to educate people in financial services, so to get better at their money at a consumer level. And isn't it interesting that the customer experience that you can facilitate through marketing can be bigger and broader and more impactful in scope than just simply getting them to buy something, but actually shaping their behaviour and having that social impact to people who learn to look after their money as well. I'm really quite inspired by that because it shows the true heart of marketers. We want to see change as well as tell a great story and to drive that value. And I reckon that's got to be a pretty fantastic space to be. At the consumer level, of course, people just want simplicity and not more features. So, if you can keep that at the top of your mind as you go into 2026, you'll be doing really well.
All right, are you ready for a drum roll? We should have a drum roll for this. Number 1, the number 1 of our 12 trends of Christmas is, you guessed it, AI. I mean, was it going to be anything else? But the AI imperative is the rise of agentic workflows. Agentic is, of course, this year's hot-button topic. It's a conversation among the C-suite from the perspective of creating value, of thinking about "How do we create sandboxes or safe governed spaces to create value within an organisation?" And I spoke with Lenovo's Jennifer Downes, who is the eCommerce CMO over there. And she is using a bunch of Adobe tools, including GenStudio. And she says, "There's no reason why we can't do personalization at scale. Using the tools like this can help us." And that has an interesting implication for marketing teams in particular. We're seeing an interesting consolidation around the world where that classic sort of in-house marketing team versus agencies and partners. We're seeing this consolidation around in-house teams who are looking to streamline their operations, use AI for efficiencies, of course, but being able to do a bunch of work that hasn't previously been done at scale through agents. Very much still an emerging trend as we look into 2026, but it's quite clear that the AI revolution isn't just a tool. We're seeing this as an operating system for marketing. We're seeing this as the way that we do things and how we work through these tools. Of course, we need to apply critical thinking. We need to be thinking about how we can use it as a companion to the strategic direction that we provide. And of course, touching back into the human truths, knowing the heartbeat of our customers and not just taking AI and agents at face value. But nevertheless, the AI imperative, the rise of agentic workflows, I'm going to be really interested to see how this one plays out, and of course, what's beyond that.
Okay, so I hope you enjoyed my quick whip through the 12 trends of Christmas. And if we're to summarise this up, what does it all tell us? Where are things going? Well, three things come to mind for me. First, that marketing has entered into an age of acceleration. We are, of course, moving or trying to move at the speed of AI. But we are seeing the emergence of new AI tools rewriting the rules for us. So personalization is becoming predictive and customers expecting these seamless experiences across every single touchpoint. And really holistic thinking from marketers around how they can work right across the business, through all parts of the business, to make sure that those experiences come to life. The second one is, of course, the technology alone won't save us, happily. We are still people. We need to be thinking about trusts, ethics, people, governance, and storytelling, my favourite. And everything else, we think about it as a lever of influence rather than being the be-all and end-all. And then lastly, the CMO's role has never been more important. The conversations that we've enjoyed this year, we've seen CMOs be interpreters of change, being the voice of the customer, and this bridge between innovation and impact, which I love. Really important interpreters and contextualizers of what's going on in the business and how to shape those stories going forward. So, what a fantastic opportunity if you're a CMO, head of marketing or in marketing teams, to being able to think about "How can we create additional value through these tools, work widely across the organisation and be able to explore creatively all of the opportunities that are before us?" So, if we've learned one thing, we need to lead with clarity and we need to tell better stories about what change means and what it can do for our organisation. And that brings us to the end. Thanks for joining me for this very special wrap-up episodes. I'm Mark Jones, and this has been the 12 trends of Christmas on the CMO Show podcast, brought to you by ImpactInstitute, in partnership with Adobe. Thanks for being with us through this year, 2025, and we'll look forward to seeing you next year.