By Andy Dougan, Strategic Business Consultant at allpoints
Recently, I attended The Drum Predictions 2026 event, surrounded by strategists, brand leaders, and industry commentators all attempting to divine what the next twelve months might hold. The honest answer? Nobody knows for certain. But several themes emerged that feel particularly relevant for those of us working in experiential marketing and live brand experiences.
The forecast: flat, misty, familiar
Mark Ritson set the tone early. His view? 2026 will look dramatically like 2025. The economy sits in a strange middle-ground, political instability persists, and while AI will reshape certain marketing functions, the revolution won’t arrive overnight.
That’s not pessimism, it’s pragmatism. And running through the day was a useful reminder: don’t obsess over what’s changing and pay attention to what isn’t.
Dan Rubel, Brand and Marketing Director at Currys, reinforced this beautifully. He doesn’t believe marketing is at some unprecedented crossroads. It’s the same game it’s always been: build brands, market those brands. Referencing A.G. Lafley, he brought it back to two enduring questions – where do we play, and how will we win there?
For agencies trying to be everything to everyone, that’s a pointed challenge.
AI: still figuring it out
AI featured heavily, as you’d expect. But the nuance was refreshing. We’re all still working out what it actually means for our roles and our industries. Despite the noise, nobody’s truly “there” yet.
Ritson sees synthetic data and speed-to-insight as the genuine unlocks. Alice Anson from Nectar360 demonstrated real-world application, turning two-week processes into 90 seconds by starting with client friction points rather than technology for its own sake.
But Rory Sutherland offered a necessary counterweight. The bill for AI will eventually come due. The pressure to deploy it with cost-reduction as the primary lens means we risk destroying value we never properly measured.
His “doorman fallacy” captured this perfectly: the cost of a doorman is easy to quantify; the value they provide, status, reassurance, human connection, is not. Organisations will optimise processes, celebrate the savings, and quietly fail to account for what they’ve lost.
For those of us in experiential, that resonates deeply. The value of physical presence, sensory engagement, and genuine human interaction has always been harder to quantify than a click-through rate, but that doesn’t make it less real.
Human judgment is rising, not falling
Eileen Hanna Yague from General Mills offered one of the day’s sharpest observations: “As marketers we’re tasked to find solutions. With AI we’re being asked to judge solutions.”
That shift matters enormously. It places human judgement, taste, and decision-making back at the centre, precisely because AI isn’t there yet. The ability to discern, to choose, to apply context and cultural intelligence becomes the differentiating skill.
Sutherland extended this further. Marketers should stop selling what we do and start articulating how we think. That’s the genuinely differentiated capability in an age of automated execution.
Brand matters more than ever
How you show up in the market, what you stand for, whether you bring original thinking – these genuinely influence customer decisions. Perhaps more than they did five years ago, when performance marketing promised to make brand-building feel optional.
The pendulum is swinging, but brands that try to do everything will struggle. Those that make deliberate choices and focus will thrive in a world that’s noisier, faster, and increasingly commoditised by AI-generated content.
There’s also a noticeable shift away from fast, wallpaper-style content toward slower, more intentional storytelling. A continued hunger for nostalgia. And a growing recognition that reach and frequency aren’t enough, brands need to enrich experience and relevance as the levers for genuine engagement.
The experiential opportunity
Tom Goodwin made an observation that stuck with me: our obsession with measuring things fast often means we stop measuring the things that actually matter.
Meanwhile, research cited during the event suggested we’ve entered an “efficiency death spiral” whereby we are optimising digital experiences to the point where they’ve lost sensory and emotional distinctiveness.
This is where live experiences and physical brand activations come into their own. Multi-sensory engagement, genuine human connection, and moments that create memory.
In a world increasingly mediated by screens and algorithms, the brands that invest in physical presence, thoughtfully, strategically, with genuine creative ambition, will stand apart.
Sutherland even predicted that Cannes will evolve from retrospective celebration toward something more like a trade show, where agencies and creators come to sell ideas they’ve already developed.
The mood in the room
Despite the cautious forecasts, most people I spoke to felt quietly optimistic. Uncertainty now feels like a certainty, and there’s a sense that people are simply getting on with it.
Clarity matters more than ever. Know what marketing can deliver and what it can’t. Stay rooted in brand health. Do fewer things brilliantly.
For those of us in experiential, that’s not a limitation. It’s a mandate.