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2026 is not a year of easy predictions. Consumers are changing at unprecedented speed, digital platforms are becoming increasingly chaotic, shopping behaviors are moving in unpredictable directions, and the rise of AI technologies is pushing marketing into a state of continuous experimentation. Based on WARC’s The Marketer’s Toolkit 2026, Brand Creativity consolidates and analyzes five major shifts that will disrupt current global marketing practices—and highlights how brands can turn these very “fracture points” into opportunities for growth.

Over more than 20 years working in brand positioning and repositioning, we have witnessed many businesses brave enough to confront an uncomfortable truth: a brand does not grow the way we want it to, but the way customers perceive it. Like a child, a brand may be raised with the aspirations of adults, yet it grows based on the signals it absorbs from its environment and the way it adapts to constant change.

AI is becoming embedded in every marketing strategy: from behavior analysis and communications planning to content creation. But when AI models are “fed” with historical data while human behavior is shifting week by week, a dangerous gap emerges: brands increasingly believe they understand their customers—when in reality, they are only understanding the past. The year 2026 opens with many unknown unknowns: variables marketers don’t know they don’t know, yet ones that directly determine how brands survive and grow. AI doesn’t make marketers less intelligent; it makes them more confident in their misunderstandings. And that is the real risk.

Mega Sales 10.10, 11.11, 12.12 have become the biggest shopping festivals in Southeast Asia. Millions of consumers wait to hunt for deals, and businesses face a choice: chase short-term promotions or turn these moments into opportunities to assert brand identity. From a Brand Creativity perspective, we believe Mega Sales is not just a race for revenue, but a moment that tests a brand’s ability to create long-term value.

Southeast Asia’s OTT market has entered a stage of selective growth. Accedo’s Winning in the Southeast Asian OTT Market report reveals a massive landscape with seventy-one billion minutes of premium video watched annually, a revenue growth rate of fourteen percent, and a continued rise in mobile-first content consumption. This is not simply evidence of a market expanding; it is evidence of users changing — and as users change, the role of OTT brands must evolve with them. The shift is driven by three major forces: the transition toward mobile-first viewing and AVOD models, the growing fragmentation of the OTT ecosystem accompanied by the expanding dominance of telecom operators, and the rapid rise of local content and live streaming. These forces do more than reshape products or business models; they redefine what an OTT brand represents in the minds of users.