Three out of four people globally now say what they value has changed. Searches for "digital detox" are up 400% year on year. 42% of consumers say screens have become overwhelming. Nearly 70% feel unable to plan long term, buried under an avalanche of noise competing for their attention.
People are taking inventory of what gets to occupy space in their lives. They're pruning. Not always consciously, necessarily. But more and more every day, we are making quiet decisions about what gets to stay and what gets filtered out of our lives.
Which emails earn an open. Which accounts get unfollowed. Which products get swapped for something that actually feels worth the space it takes up. And brands are being weighed in that calculation. How can your brand has earn the right to exist in people's lives at all?
Visibility and awareness aren’t enough anymore. Your brand needs to mean something, stand for something and represent something.
It needs to matter to people.
The Future Laboratory captured this shift in their Future Five 2026 report saying:
"We are living through the great re-evaluation. A prolonged period of economic instability, the proliferation of attention-zapping technology and a rising tide of loneliness, inequality and misogyny have left us, as humans and consumers, searching for more meaning. We are increasingly questioning which products, experiences and relationships truly enrich our lives."
This isn't just an industry observation. It's the lived experience of nearly everyone I know.
Everyone talks about authentic branding. The word has become so overused it's practically a cliché. But the reason it’s everywhere right now is life is getting more and more artificial.
More of what we see and read is generated and optimised. When the internet was mostly human, you could get away with sounding like a brand. Now that half the internet is starting to sound like a brand, being real becomes a competitive differentiation.
The canyon between what brands say they're doing and what they’re actually doing is vast.
Apple used to represent freedom, creativity and innovation. They may say they still do, but the clear reality is that profits are the real motivator behind every business decision. Tesla had an environmental mission to make electric cars mainstream. But now the tangled whims of an egotistical, lonely and insecure billionaire have corrupted that mission. Open AI began as a non-profit until the the first to market reality, and the need for funding led to a complete abandonment of the principles they started from.
And the betrayal feels identical to the same cynicism we feel towards our politicians. Say the right thing, signal the right values, win trust, then do whatever is most profitable once you’re in power. And we’ve watched the same billionaire CEO’s from these and other of the biggest companies in the world line up to bow to the equally corrupt political powers that they can benefit from.
So it’s no wonder people feel disillusioned. And it’s no wonder we crave authenticity. True authenticity.
Authenticity being simply alignment. Your values in public, and your behaviour in private, looking like the same thing. Not just a picture without a filter, or a script not written by AI. But a company that believes in something, and then actually hold to and lives out those values.
Significance isn't a feeling you can manufacture. It's measurable across four distinct dimensions. You don’t need to be perfect in all four, but you should know which one you’re leading with.
This is your tangible impact. The real problems you lift off people's shoulders and the actual value you create. Practical value matters because it earns you trust. If you can’t clearly point to the problem you solve, nothing else matters much.
Do you bring people together ? What relationships or communities exist in the world because of you? What would your customers lose besides your product if you vanished tomorrow?
Social value matters because it creates belonging. And belonging is sticky, it's the kind of value a competitor can't undercut with a discount code.
Are you shaping how people think? What conversations do you spark? What beliefs, behaviours or assumptions do you challenge or change? Cultural value helps them name a problem, take a stand, or see the world a little differently.
What better or preferred future and world are you building toward? How will your industry look different because you were here? What change are you setting in motion that will keep moving without you? Future value turns what you do today into something people can believe in tomorrow.
So my brand strategy questions for 2026 are extremely atypical, but I think equally valuable. Here's five questions to sit with right now:
1. What would you refuse to do, even if it doubled revenue this year?
If there’s no real “no”, you don’t have values, you have preferences.
2. Do you leave people feeling more capable after interacting with you, or more dependent?
The brands that matter make people stronger, and enable them to do more.
3. What do you help people do less of?
This is the time to be subtracting. Don’t add to the noise. Remove it.
4. What can customers predict about you with high confidence?
Predictability is underrated. It’s what trust feels like. Could you ever trust someone who’s behaviour was completely unpredictable? Brands function the same way.
5. What do people become because of you?
Not what they buy. Who they are after. Think in terms of identity. Do they become artists? Founders? Runners? Readers? Do they become confident? Do they become someone who trusts themselves? Someone who trusts others? Someone who speaks up? Someone who cares more?
People don’t owe you their attention. You have to earn it. I hope if you’ve read this far that I’ve done that. If you only take one thing from this article, take this:
In 2026, brand is permission.
Permission to be in someone’s inbox.
Permission to take up space on their home screen.
Permission to be talked about over dinner.
Permission to be chosen.
And you don’t earn that permission with campaigns.
You earn it by being something that matters to them.
I’d love to know if any of this resonated for you. Let me know in a comment one brand that you think genuinely earns your attention right now and why.
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