We’ve been talking about “storytelling” in marketing for years, but most brands still treat it like a slide in a deck rather than a skill. The people who actually understand storytelling — the emotional thread, the hook, the build, the close — will be the ones who win in 2026.

And the data backs this shift. Nielsen’s 2025 Emotion & Attention Study found emotionally-led creative drives significantly higher attention, memory and brand lift than functional messaging. That’s why the few ads that nail storytelling stay with you — and the rest disappear into the feed.

This applies to everything: thought leadership, team content, product content, ads. For team and product storytelling, “follow my day” isn’t enough. The winners will use proper interview techniques, find the emotional hook, and weave a narrative that feels human instead of forced.

In ads, stories rooted in resilience, connection and actual relatability will outrun anything that looks like a product brochure dressed up as a video. Emotional storytelling is an art — so either hire for it or train your team properly. It will be one of the biggest creative differentiators of 2026.

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Thought leadership works. But most of what brands post under that banner is… not thought leadership. Announcing a new campaign isn’t thought leadership. Posting a team photo isn’t thought leadership. It’s channel hygiene.

The kind of thought leadership that works in 2026 is built from lived experience — your lessons, your mistakes, your POV. And audiences are hungry for this. The Content Marketing Institute (2025) reports 96% of B2B marketers are making thought leadership content, but only 43% are doing it strategically — hence the sea of bland posts.

LinkedIn and Edelman’s 2025 study found 64% of buyers trust thought leadership more than traditional marketing, and 59% say it directly influences purchasing decisions. Locally, The Action Exchange has shown people gravitating toward perspective-led content, not generic education.

The blocker? Businesses still discourage teams from posting — very 1999 behaviour. If you want a real thought leadership engine, unlock your people. Give them permission, then give them structure: examples, prompts, formats, word counts, and platform-specific best practice.

In 2026, your thinking is your competitive advantage. The brands that win will be the ones leading the conversation, not narrating the company updates.

Posting as a small business owner or a corporate leader can feel like standing on stage in your underwear. But audiences genuinely care — and the less polished you are, the more they connect.

According to TikTok’s 2025 What’s Next Report, unfiltered, flawed and “real” content outperforms polished content across recall, engagement and sentiment. Mistakes (real ones — not the staged “whoops!” era) are content gold. The packing error. The spreadsheet you ruined. The day you massively overestimated your capacity. It humanises you.

If you’ve built a business or carved out a genuine career, your story is inspirational — even if it doesn’t feel like it. Perfection is out. Humanity is in.

Mischief is back. Real mischief — not cutesy brand humour. We’re entering a lighter cultural moment where cheek, cleverness and a bit of chaos cut through.

AdWeek’s 2025 Culture Trends highlights “playful provocation” as a global creative shift. And we’re seeing it everywhere:
• Dunkin’s Halloween chaos
• Burger King Brazil dropping discount coupons into competitor locations on Google Maps
• Ikea Canada texting “U Up?” at 2am to promote sleep products

These moments work because they’re human and unexpected, and audiences are craving something that gives them a laugh.

If your brand playbook won’t let you go full feral, that’s fine. But you can still acknowledge relatable, ironic moments your customers are living.

Short-form isn’t going anywhere. Despite the noise about longer formats, short-form dominates attention. YouTube’s Shorts Performance Insights (2025) show Shorts growth still outpacing long-form uploads for many creators. TikTok’s own data (2025 AU release) shows the same.

Hooks still matter, but the tone is shifting. The era of “I made $80k this week” is dying out. What’s working now? Mistakes, product explainers, quick lessons, clear POVs, human stories and to-the-point PSAs.

Short. Honest. No ego. That’s the 2026 formula.

Ad costs are rising across every major market and channel — and not gently. WARC’s 2025–26 Global Ad Spend Forecast and GroupM’s 2025 Media Inflation Outlook both confirm increasing CPMs and CPTs across TV, digital video, paid social and OOH.

Unless your CFO has a direct line to heaven, you’ll be expected to deliver more with less.

Traditional brands are nervous about pulling out of TV. Social-first brands aren’t sure where to spend. Meanwhile, the platforms will — shockingly — all recommend themselves.

At August One, the only thing that works is starting with the problem. Not the channel. A brand awareness problem for over-50s looks nothing like a brand awareness problem for under-30s. Same problem, completely different media habits. Solve the problem first, the channel mix becomes obvious.

And most brands need both:
• Performance (conversion, leads, traffic)
• Awareness (reach, impressions, brand salience)

These are different buys with different creative needs. One ad cannot do both, and forcing it wastes budget.

A few extra notes:
• Pre-buy where demand is predictable
• Use community + owned channels as creative sandpits
• Keep a small budget aside for experimentation

In 2026, discipline is the whole game.

Podcasts are booming (global ad spend is projected to hit US$5.5 billion in 2026) — but the big shift is the move toward video-first podcasting. According to Spotify’s 2025 Podcast Trends, video consumption hours are beating audio-only on retention and session length.

Creators and brands are being forced into proper channel-first creative. “Make once, publish everywhere” is a great dream, but we’re not there yet. AI tools can help, but none are truly delivering this seamlessly.

Do next:
• Build content for the platform, not around it
• Let audience behaviour dictate your creative
• Stop treating podcasts like radio and socials like billboards

Culture has splintered. Audiences no longer live in one big public feed — they live in micro-communities tied to interests, values and identities. According to GWI’s 2025 Social Trends, micro-identities and niche communities are now outpacing broad interest groups in both engagement and trust.

In Australia, where 91% of the population is online, the real growth won’t come from reach — it’ll come from belonging.

Gen Z in particular is exhausted. Human8 shows 73% feel emotionally drained by the pressure of public posting. They’re moving into Close Friends lists, private chats, invite-only groups or simply lurking quietly.

Do next:
→ Build loyalty experiences that feel personal and premium
→ Treat community management as an actual discipline
→ Create content for micro-segments using their tone, cues and rituals

Community isn’t a tactic anymore. It’s the moat.

AI is now the operating system for marketing — faster briefs, sharper ideas, more content, more everything. But risk grows with adoption. Forrester’s 2025 AI Risk Forecast predicts more than US$10B in enterprise value could be lost thanks to poor governance, untested tools, bad data and legal issues.

And while internal governance is improving, the real issue is external tools. Marketers will use them — because internal systems will never keep pace with commercial platforms. That’s where things break.

Gartner’s 2025 CMO Vision calls for “zero-based channel planning” and explicit AI governance frameworks because shadow AI tools are driving real risk.

The fix isn’t banning AI or letting it run wild. It’s building guardrails:
• Create an AI Council
• Approve internal + external tools
• Put humans at the end of every major decision
• Test everything before rollout

Think of governance as the tiny cost that unlocks the massive upside AI gives back.

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