When you prepare a keynote, you’re forced to make choices.

• What really matters?
• What’s noise?
• What can you confidently stand behind in front of a room full of experienced people?

Last week, I had the chance to do exactly that while traveling for an afterwork event in Barcelona, a city I’ll never complain about visiting. Work trip, good conversations, a different setting… not the worst combination at all.

What made it even better was that the keynote took place in the evening.
Which meant: hybrid working at its best. I could work a full day remotely from Barcelona and then head to the event later on.

Thanks to OneCoWork, I found a great spot to work from during the day. Highly recommended if you ever need a productive base in this beautiful city.

And yes, I also managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing in between. Purely for cultural reasons, of course. 😉

The session itself was made possible by CNQR, and it gave me a great opportunity to step out of my usual routines and reflect more deliberately.

What follows is not a trend report.
It’s a little look behind the scenes at how I prepare for such a talk and why the way these topics emerged matters more than the list itself.

I don’t start with trends. I start with work.

When I prepare a keynote, I don’t begin with slides or hype cycles.

I start with questions like:

• What keeps coming up in projects?
• Where do teams struggle to make decisions?
• Which topics suddenly feel “urgent”, even if they weren’t planned?
• What kind of cold call emails C-level starts forwarding? 😉

If I don’t see a topic in my day-to-day work, it doesn’t make it onto the stage.

That’s why these 10 topics are not predictions.

They’re patterns I’ve observed repeatedly across different organizations, industries, and maturity levels.

Being honest about expertise (and why that matters)

One important thing I’m always very open about:

I’m not the deepest expert in every single one of these fields.
And I don’t think that’s a weakness.

My role is usually not to execute every detail myself, but to:

• Understand why a topic matters
• See the business impact
• Know when it becomes relevant
• and, very importantly, know who can execute it properly

This is where my network becomes a real asset.

I can rely on people I trust. Specialists, practitioners, builders, who go deep where depth is needed. That allows me to stay focused on translation, alignment, and decision-making rather than pretending to know everything.

At the same time, I do hold myself to a clear standard.
I don’t want to be the kind of consultant who only scratches the surface of every topic.

My ambition is to understand these areas well enough to discuss them in depth, challenge assumptions, and assess their real impact on business decisions. That means investing time, staying curious, and continuously learning & networking, even in areas where others might go deeper technically.

And where I feel that my own expertise reaches its limits, I prefer to be explicit about it.

Transparency beats pretending.

In my experience, that honesty creates better collaboration, clearer expectations, and ultimately better outcomes.

The 10 marketing topics (short and to the point)

Here’s the condensed version of what I shared on stage intentionally brief and impact-focused:

1. Volatility as the new baseline

Planning under stable assumptions becomes the exception. Marketing teams increasingly optimize for flexibility, optionality, and fast adjustment rather than long-term certainty.

2. Measurement remains fragmented

The challenge is no longer missing data, but conflicting signals (cookies, IDs, etc.). Teams need to make decisions with imperfect inputs and align measurement with business questions, not dashboards.

3. Consent as a strategic signal

As tracking erodes, explicit consent becomes more valuable. It signals trust, relevance, intent and shifts focus from scale to quality of relationships.

4. Clean rooms as infrastructure

Less glamorous than tools or platforms, but essential. Clean rooms enable collaboration across data silos while respecting privacy and governance constraints.

5. Messaging as the storefront

In complex journeys, messaging often decides before channels do. Clear narratives help users understand value quickly, especially when attention is fragmented.

6. Search becomes an answer layer

With AI-driven interfaces, search increasingly provides answers, not links. Visibility depends more on authority, structure, and clarity than pure traffic optimization.

7. AI agents enter the decision chain

Agents already compare, summarize, and pre-filter options. Marketing will need to consider how information is consumed by machines, not just humans.

8. Creators move closer to revenue

The role of creators shifts from reach to trust. They become contextual explainers and authentic bridges between brands and audiences.

9. Brand built like performance

Brand work becomes more iterative and measurable. Hypotheses, testing, and feedback loops replace long-term bets without validation.

10. Culture as last unfair advantage

With tools widely accessible, execution quality differentiates teams. Decision clarity, trust, and speed increasingly determine marketing effectiveness.

None of these topics are revolutionary on their own.
What’s new is how simultaneously they affect organizations.

Why speaking about this matters to me

Preparing for this keynote reminded me why I enjoy these moments so much.

They force me to step back, connect dots, and articulate things that are often felt but not named inside organizations.

And they confirm something I see again and again:
Trends only matter when they translate into decisions.

Everything else is just noise.

A final thought

I don’t expect organizations to “master” all of these topics in 2026.

But I do believe that the ability to recognize patterns early, discuss them openly, and bring the right people to the table will make a real difference – as usual.

That’s what I try to do in my work.

On stage, in projects, and in conversations.

If you’re curious how I support organizations in turning such patterns into concrete decisions and operating models, you can find more about my work here: Linelia’s services.

And as always, I’m happy to continue the conversation, wherever it happens next.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: If you should be looking for a great speaker coach, check out Janik Adorf. I once again realized in Barcelona that I should soon book a session with him.