Our view

Marketing is being rebuilt while it is still running

Budgets are tighter, tools are smarter, attention is harder to earn, and the lines between brand, experience and technology have nearly gone.

Output Judgement Campaigns Systems Reach Attention Screens Rooms Reporting Proof

Why we think this

For five years Forward Media worked as an agency. The questions changed before the industry did.

Clients stopped asking us for a campaign and started asking how their marketing should work now. Forward is our answer: specialists who do the work, and a practice that thinks out loud about where it is going. These are the five shifts we are working on.

FromMore outputToBetter judgement

AI makes producing easy. Deciding what is worth producing, and what should never be automated, is now the hard part and the valuable one.

The teams that win will not be the ones that produce the most. They will be the ones that know what is worth making, what to stop, and where a person still has to make the call.

What it means for marketing leaders

Decide where AI helps and where it never decides.
Put judgement, not volume, at the centre of the brief.
Measure fewer things, and measure them better.

Answered byExceed Vrio Labs

Related thinking

FromCampaignsToSystems

The work no longer ends at launch. Marketing has to run, learn and improve every week, inside the organisation, not around it.

That means operations, data and content working as one system, owned inside the organisation rather than rented campaign by campaign.

What it means for marketing leaders

Design the operating model before the next campaign.
Connect data, content and channels so learning compounds.
Build capability in the team, not dependence on suppliers.

Answered byExceed Vrio Labs

Related thinking

FromReachToAttention

People decide in seconds what deserves them. Ideas have to be made for the way people actually watch, scroll and share.

Reach can be bought. Attention has to be earned, and it is earned by ideas that respect how people behave on the platforms they use.

What it means for marketing leaders

Start with the idea, then the format.
Make for the feed, not for the presentation.
Run social like a newsroom, not a noticeboard.

Answered bySard

Related thinking

FromScreensToRooms

The noisier the feed, the more being in the same place matters. Experiences are where brands are believed, not just seen.

Launches, gatherings and experiences give brands what screens cannot: presence, memory and proof that the promise is real.

What it means for marketing leaders

Use rooms for the moments that need belief.
Design experiences that travel online afterwards.
Plan production as carefully as the idea.

Answered byBackstage

Related thinking

FromReportingToProof

Every budget line is questioned. Marketing has to show what it changed for the business, not only what it shipped.

Leaders want to know what moved: revenue, reputation, behaviour. Reporting activity is no longer enough to defend a budget.

What it means for marketing leaders

Agree what success means before the work starts.
Measure outcomes, not output.
Build the dashboards leadership will actually read.

Answered byExceed Vrio Labs

Related thinking

The pressure behind the shifts.

Source: Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey. Global figures; our Gulf edition is in preparation.

7.7%

Average marketing budget as a share of company revenue.

59%

of CMOs say their budget is not enough to deliver their strategy.

39%

of CMOs plan to cut agency spend.

22%

say generative AI has already reduced their reliance on external agencies.

The Gulf edition

Marketing is being rebuilt while it is still running

For five years Forward Media worked as an agency. The questions changed before the industry did.

The pressure behind the shifts.

What are you trying to move?

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