LAGOM Insights:
Thought Sparks for
Business Success.

2025 feels like a transitional year. To be more accurate, the kind of year in which big marketing promises suddenly meet reality. For a long time, everyone talked endlessly about AI, automation, data, personalisation, attribution models and “marketing transformation.” But now something is shifting. Media budgets are stagnating, uncertainty is rising, and executives are asking tougher questions.

And the central question has changed. It’s no longer: “Which tools do we need?” It’s: “What actually works?”

This shift is reshaping the priorities of CMOs, away from activity and volume, and toward clarity, focus and measurable impact.

AI is at the top of that list. But not in the way the industry talked about it last year. In 2024, AI was the playground: everyone tested, experimented, generated content, and tried to move faster. In 2025, CMOs are much more sober. They’ve realised that AI by itself doesn’t create effectiveness, it only amplifies what’s already there. Good strategies get better with AI. Bad strategies get automated faster.

The new focus is pragmatic and much more mature: AI for automation, not for endless content production. AI for forecasting and decision support, not for shortcuts. AI that improves media efficiency, rather than bloating the pipeline. It’s less about “How much AI do we use?” and more about “Where does AI demonstrably increase impact?”

The same realism applies to data. For years, data-driven marketing was a slogan, a promise that more dashboards would somehow lead to better decisions. In reality, many companies collected so much data that they couldn’t use it meaningfully. Charts looked impressive, but didn’t change anything.

Now CMOs are pushing for something much simpler: fewer data points, higher data quality, and clearer KPIs. The pressure to demonstrate effectiveness is forcing marketing teams to return to the basics. Data finally has to enable decisions, not decorate presentations. The era of “big data” is giving way to something much smarter: “right data.”

And with this shift, something else is happening, something overdue: impact is becoming more important than activity. For too long, marketing celebrated volume. More posts, more content streams, more campaigns, more assets. “Always-on” became the default answer to everything.

But brands are discovering that more activity rarely leads to more effectiveness. In many cases, it simply leads to more noise. CMOs now want outcomes that matter, not output for the sake of output.

This also explains why media planning is changing so quickly. With budgets stagnating, media isn’t becoming bigger, it’s becoming smarter. The new logic is simple but powerful: fewer channels, clearer messages, less waste, more relevance. CMOs no longer want to be everywhere. They want to be exactly where impact happens.

All of this is reshaping the role of the CMO itself. After years of operational overload. Constantly managing tools, vendors, platforms and productions, CMOs are reclaiming their original role as strategists. The job is becoming more about prioritisation than participation. More about leading than managing. More about defining direction than producing deliverables.

And this shift changes the expectations for agencies as well. Clients don’t need more decks, more formats or more output. They need partners who help them make smarter decisions. Partners who can simplify complexity. Partners who understand how to turn data and AI into real impact.

Expectations move from quantity to quality, from execution to strategy, from vendor to advisor. In this environment, small, sharp, strategic agencies outperform big structures, not because they do more, but because they help clients do less, and do it better.

The future of marketing belongs to those who create clarity. To those who prioritise what matters. To those who deliver impact, not noise.

2026 won’t reward the busiest brands, it will reward the most focused ones. And the CMOs who succeed will be the ones who dare to make choices, not to do everything.

At LAGOM Network, we believe exactly that: not too much, not too little. Just right. Smart marketing, clear direction, measurable impact.

The era of hype is fading. The era of intention is beginning. And it’s arriving faster than most expect.