This blog is inspired by dentsu’s Beyond 2025: Winning in the Algorithmic Era, a global thought leadership series exploring how brands can navigate a future shaped by AI, automation, and always-on algorithms.
We all know that social media and the algorithmic curation of content have reshaped society. In terms of popular culture, we have countless significant niches worldwide to tap into wherever we are. Due to the same mechanisms, politics is more polarized than ever. Therefore, the marketer’s map is getting harder to read as fragmentation accelerates. It is not surprising that 74% of CMOs find it difficult to know how to connect their brand to culture. The sheer number of cultural spaces makes it increasingly difficult to navigate. In the same survey (dentsu Creative CMO Survey 2024), 88% of the 950+ CMOs asked agreed with the statement it’s more important than ever before for brands to be a part of culture. To stay relevant today, brands and brand managers feel the need to respond at the pace of culture, optimizing every piece of content for performance, maintaining an always-on approach, and balancing craft with efficiency better than ever before.
But this is a multifaceted phenomenon. As the algorithms take us deeper into our own individual worlds and rabbit holes, some human needs are constant, notably, the need for context and being part of something bigger than ourselves, something outside ourselves that can provide us with social meaning. This deeply human trait has made us react to the fragmentation of the fabric of society. It’s not a coincidence that young people today, in searching for the real thing, are into 90s memorabilia and watching shows such as Friends, Stranger Things, and revisiting Britpop.
When the distance between people grows, we are faced with a togetherness deficit (denstu Creative Trends 2025). When Gen Z, the most digitally connected generation ever, are feeling more lonely than their predecessors, it seems plausible to launch a product like Friend (an AI wearable recording device) or attend The Offline Club in Amsterdam.
Sports and the Human Connection
As the demand for human connection grows, sports entertainment is expanding rapidly, especially among younger audiences. The sports industry is expected to expand significantly in the coming years. For instance, the sports technology market alone is forecast to grow by 21% over the next five years, according to Grandview Research. Sports and live sports events are increasingly important for consumers today and will function as tools to fight off the togetherness deficit. All of this is driving the connected TV trend, and we see players such as Amazon, Netflix, and Disney moving into the live sports category. When Nasser Al-Khelaifi laments that the Champions League final is being overshadowed by the Super Bowl, he offers insight into how the future of football/soccer, the world's biggest sport, might evolve.
Beyond Sports
Marketers looking to make human connections are not limited to sports. For example, McDonald's Famous Orders was a way to leverage their consumers’ social feeds, using the strength of celebrities to go beyond algorithmic planning. Another strong example is the Honduran non-governmental organization Grupo Estratégico PAE, which established a floating emergency contraception dispensary in international waters, circumventing the country's 2009 ban, and produced a video series highlighting women’s journeys to access it.
For brands and marketing, the future involves a three-step process:
- Marketers must, like any other influencer (probably with the help of AI), master the algorithms to make an impact. That might take them far, but if you want to take your brand even further, you need to boost your algorithms to make sure you stay ahead of the competition.
- As AI levels the playing field in algorithm mastery, new first-party data sources (such as Merkury) will play a vital role in driving growth.
- And, as we’ve seen above, if you have the bravery and the financial resources to go beyond the algorithms to create deeply human connections or tap into live sports, you can take your brand even further.
To explore more trends and brand implications, download Beyond 2025: Winning in the Algorithmic Era.
