Why the 2026 CMO is returning to core branding to win the AI race

Past forward: the 2026 roadmap

McKinsey surveyed 500 senior marketing decision makers across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK for its State of Marketing Europe 2026 report, published on 20 November 2025. It named the result past forward: a return to mastering the basics of marketing at the same time as the industry races towards agentic AI.

The rankings tell the story. Branding came first on the 2026 priority list. Generative AI came seventeenth out of twenty, even though half of respondents named it a top-three fastest-growing area of investment. Marketing leaders are spending on AI and prioritising brand, and the two are not in tension.

Why branding reclaimed first place

In a market marked by economic volatility, brand strength supplies the clarity and security customers look for, and it holds value when performance channels tighten. The same McKinsey research shows where the investment intent sits over the next two years: 76 per cent into creativity, up 14 percentage points, 71 per cent into perceived value and 70 per cent into innovation.

Brand is also becoming a governance question. Data handling now shapes brand trust directly, and the academic evidence on breach cost is real without being dramatic. Kamiya and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2021 on 188 cyberattacks, found the average attacked firm losing about 1.1 per cent of market value, rising where personal financial data was exposed. Treat data protection as part of brand equity rather than a legal chore.

The accountability gap

The most uncomfortable number in the McKinsey study is this: only 3 per cent of chief marketing officers can demonstrate a return on more than half of their marketing spend. That is the accountability gap in one figure, and it explains why budgets keep tightening. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey, published 11 May 2026, puts marketing budgets at 7.8 per cent of company revenue, down from 9.1 per cent three years earlier, with 56 per cent of chief marketing officers reporting insufficient budget to deliver their strategy.

The answer to a tightening budget is a better case for it. Leaders are shifting towards through-cycle investing, holding or increasing spend when conditions soften. The oldest example still holds up: during the Depression, Kellogg’s board voted to cut advertising, W.K. Kellogg overruled it and added a million dollars to the budget, largely into radio, and company profits rose from about 4.3 million dollars a year in the late 1920s to about 5.7 million in the early 1930s, according to the company history.

To make that case to a finance director, marketing mix modelling and probabilistic measurement do more than last-click attribution ever will. The method is set out in marketing ROI, measuring what matters to a board.

Agentic AI: from drafting to acting

Only 6 per cent of European marketing leaders report high generative AI maturity, on McKinsey’s measure. That 6 per cent already report efficiency gains of around 22 per cent, and expect 28 per cent within two years. The rest are still deciding.

Meanwhile the tools have moved past drafting. Boston Consulting Group’s June 2026 study of 300 chief marketing officers found 96 per cent describing an end-to-end AI transformation, just under a third having transformed significant parts of the function with agents, and 8 per cent running campaigns in which multiple agents operate autonomously. Autonomous systems now pair customer intelligence with marketing action, which raises the stakes on direction. An agent pursues whatever goal it is given.

Dubai speed, European rigour

The two markets I work across are strong at different things. European marketing leadership leads on rigour: marketing mix modelling, measurement discipline and long-horizon brand building. Dubai leads on speed, taking a trend from a social media sighting to a retail shelf inside a quarter.

Either on its own has a weakness. Rigour without speed misses the market. Speed without rigour builds businesses that evaporate when a trend fades. Pairing European measurement discipline with UAE operational flexibility gives you growth that survives the cycle, which is the practical version of past forward for anyone operating in both.

Five moves for 2026

• Invest through the cycle. Hold or increase brand spend when conditions soften, and be ready to evidence the decision.
• Centralise measurement. Move beyond scattered agency reporting and build one in-house view that reconciles marketing, CRM and finance.
• Build salience for buyers who are not in market yet. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s 95:5 heuristic, published by the LinkedIn B2B Institute in 2021, holds that roughly 5 per cent of B2B buyers are in market at any one time. Bain finds 85 per cent of B2B buyers purchasing from the day-one list of vendors they had in mind before they started searching. Brand work is how you get onto that list.
• Treat data protection as brand equity. Transparency about what you collect and why is now part of the proposition.
• Use unpolished, interactive content deliberately. Raw formats open dialogue where polished assets close it, particularly with younger audiences.

To stay visible as buyers move to AI answer engines, add generative engine optimisation to the list. Content has to be distinctive and clearly sourced enough that an AI system cites it. Generic material does not get cited, which is covered further in how AI is redefining marketing leadership.

The through-cycle mindset

The 2026 roadmap asks marketing to behave like an investment rather than a cost centre. Through-cycle investing and centralised measurement are what turn agile experiments into long-term equity. The successful chief marketing officer flattens the silos that slow decisions, applies AI to a strategy that already makes sense, and holds the line on what the brand stands for.

Getting those fundamentals right, the brand a model cannot commoditise, is the core of the brand positioning and strategy work I lead.

Sources. Priority rankings, investment intent, the 3 per cent return figure and the 6 per cent AI maturity figure are from McKinsey, State of Marketing Europe 2026: Past forward, published 20 November 2025, 500 senior marketing decision makers across five European markets. Agentic marketing figures are from Boston Consulting Group, published 15 June 2026, 300 chief marketing officers. Budget figures are from the Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, published 11 May 2026. Breach cost is from Kamiya, Kang, Kim, Milidonis and Stulz, Journal of Financial Economics, 2021. The 95:5 heuristic is from Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, published by the LinkedIn B2B Institute in 2021, and is a heuristic rather than a measurement. The day-one list figure is from Bain and Company. Kellogg figures are from the company history as published in the International Directory of Company Histories.