We are living through the collapse of the old world, and the quiet construction of a new one. From artificial intelligence and clean energy to bioengineering and digital governance, the core systems that defined the last century are rapidly being dismantled and replaced. But this isn’t just about technology. According to futurist Peter Leyden, we’re at a historic turning point: One of the rare moments in American and global history when everything gets reimagined at once.
In 2026, the world feels increasingly pre-scripted. You open Netflix, and three-quarters of what you watch is recommended by an algorithm. Spotify predicts the exact song for your Sunday mood. Amazon quietly shapes a third of your purchases through its suggestions. The randomness of daily life the happy accident of discovery is being optimized out of existence.
This isn’t speculative. Forecasts suggest that by 2026, 85% of customer interactions will happen without a human agent. Instead, predictive systems and conversational AI will anticipate needs, guide choices, and close the loop before you even notice the decision point. Personalization, once a marketing tactic, has become infrastructure.
The upside is undeniable: smoother experiences, higher satisfaction, faster decisions. McKinsey notes that personalization already drives a 20% boost in sales conversions. For companies, the math is irresistible. For consumers, it feels convenient—until it doesn’t.
Because with personalization comes a paradox. The more precisely the world knows you, the less space it leaves for surprise. Convenience edges out curiosity. Relevance slides into manipulation. Shared cultural touchstones fracture as each of us receives a customized reality.
This is the tension of 2026: efficiency versus wonder. A generation raised on algorithmic guidance may gain comfort, but lose resilience. A society that no longer tolerates randomness risks becoming brittle, unprepared for true shocks.
For businesses, the challenge isn’t whether to personalize..it’s how. The brands that will win are those that protect space for serendipity. A travel company that builds unpredictability into its itineraries. A retailer that surprises customers with unpredicted finds. An educator who leaves room for the book you never thought to ask for.
The end of coincidence is not inevitable. It’s a design choice. And the most valuable experiences of 2026 may be the ones that feel least engineered.
For a century, marketers preached the gospel of brand loyalty. People bought Coca-Cola for the dream. Marlboro for the cowboy. Mercedes for the badge.
That religion is over.
Euromonitor’s Trending Topics 2026makes it plain: despite household incomes crawling upward at just 0.4% a year since 2021, consumers don’t judge by price alone. They demand health, convenience, sustainability, digital ease. If you can’t deliver, you’re irrelevant.
71% of consumers worry about the rising cost of everyday items. But they aren’t clinging to legacy labels. They are defecting to private label. Cooking ingredients, staple foods, dairy—once the strongholds of heritage brands—are now being stripped bare by discounters and warehouse clubs.
And then come the insurgents: Temu. TikTok. SHEIN. They don’t sell myths. They sell speed, affordability, and relevance. And they are winning.
The report names the shift: brand loyalty is weakening. Loyalty isn’t earned. It’s rented, renewed only as long as the offer makes sense.
Winners already know this. InterContinental Hotels sells NOMO solo-stay packages with wellness perks. SAIC’s MG4 EV became a European bestseller by combining affordability with advanced features. They didn’t trade on heritage. They traded on delivery.
So stop polishing your history. Nobody cares. In this economy of squeezed incomes and rising costs, the only question is: Do you deliver today?
The cult of the brand is dead. The cult of delivery has begun.
WARC’sThe Future of Programmatic 2025 is a meticulously composed document. The charts are polished. The language is neutral. The predictions are framed as progress.
But read it closely and a deeper truth emerges: It’s not a report. It’s an autopsy. What’s dying is unpredictability. Creativity. Humanity. And we’re all expected to applaud as the corpse is carried off, sanitized and smiling.
We Are Optimizing Ourselves Into Irrelevance
Every year, programmatic becomes more “efficient.” More “targeted.” More “brand safe.” And with each incremental improvement, something irreplaceable is lost.
We’ve mistaken precision for persuasion. We’ve traded emotional impact for mechanical relevance. We’ve built a system that serves the spreadsheet, not the soul.
We didn’t refine advertising. We tamed it. And in doing so, we made it forgettable.
Curation Is Not a Strategy. It’s a Symptom.
Let’s stop pretending curation is innovation. It’s not. It’s fear management. It’s an escape hatch from a system that got too messy. We created an open marketplace—then panicked when it did what open things do: surprise us.
So we closed it.
We built private marketplaces, multi-publisher deals, curated “quality” impressions. And we congratulated ourselves for regaining control. But in truth, we just shrank the canvas. The reach is cleaner, sure. But the resonance is gone.
Personalization Has Become a Prison
We’re shown what the machine thinks we want—again and again—until novelty disappears. We call it relevance, but what it really is… is confinement. When every ad is customized to our past behavior, we stop growing. We stop discovering. We become static reflections of data points.
We aren’t advertising to humans anymore. We’re advertising to ghosts of their former selves.
AI Isn’t Making Ads Safer. It’s Making Them Invisible.
The report praises AI for enhancing brand safety. But here’s the problem no one wants to name: AI doesn’t understand context. It understands keywords, sentiment scores, and statistical tone. So entire stories, entire voices, entire truths are algorithmically scrubbed out—because the machine can’t read between the lines.
It’s not safety. It’s sanitization. It’s censorship with a dashboard.
It’s flawed. It’s physical. It’s not entirely measurable. And because of that—it still has soul.
It reminds us that real advertising doesn’t beg for clicks. It stops you mid-step. It lingers in your head hours later, uninvited.
The Real Threat Isn’t Bad Ads. It’s Forgettable Ones.
We keep polishing the system, but forget why the system existed in the first place. Advertising isn’t a math problem. It’s a cultural force. A punchline. A provocation. A seduction. A story. And we’ve allowed it to become… efficient.
That should terrify us.
Because efficient ads don’t change minds. Efficient ads don’t start movements. Efficient ads don’t get remembered.
Only real ones do. Messy. Emotional. Imperfect. Human.
In Case You Skimmed, Read This:
Curation isn’t strategy. It’s shrinkage.
AI brand safety is quiet censorship.
Personalization killed surprise.
The future of programmatic isn’t what’s next—it’s what’s left.
We didn’t lose the plot. We wrote it out of the story. Stay Curious
There’s a plush goblin haunting luxury boutiques and TikTok feeds. Its ears are sharp. Its grin is chaotic. Its name is Labubu—and it’s being cradled like a rosary by grown adults who should know better.
But this isn’t a story about a toy. It’s a story about us. About late-stage capitalism, spiritual starvation, and the strange things we choose to love when reality no longer loves us back.
A Totem of Belonging
In the post-everything world—post-truth, post-community, post-authenticity—belonging has been outsourced to brands.
Enter Labubu.
Created by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung and mass-produced by Chinese collectibles giant Pop Mart, Labubu isn’t just cute—it’s coded. It’s an aesthetic cipher. A subcultural handshake. A passport into a secret society of hyper-curated taste.
“I’m not mainstream. I’m initiated. I collect emotions, not just objects.”
Like any good totem, it offers safety. Like any good flex, it offers status. And in a culture where identity is pieced together through possessions, Labubu becomes a holy relic in the temple of self-curation.
Adults today are drowning in dread—economic, ecological, existential. We’ve been asked to function in a world on fire. So we cling to anything that reminds us of a time before collapse.
Labubu is innocence, shrink-wrapped. It’s climate-proof nostalgia. It doesn’t age, complain, or ask anything of you. It just smiles—eerily, endlessly.
In a society addicted to productivity, Labubu is a plush permission slip to regress, to soften, to feel.
Here’s how it works: you buy a box without knowing what’s inside. Maybe it’s common. Maybe it’s rare. Maybe it’s worth hundreds. Maybe it completes your set. Maybe it doesn’t.
The mechanism is simple:
Hope → Anticipation → Reveal → Repeat.
Every box is a lottery ticket for the emotionally overdrawn. Every unboxing is a micro-hit of meaning in a culture that offers less of it each day.
This isn’t collecting. It’s ritualized uncertainty, engineered scarcity, weaponized whimsy.
Post-Product Capitalism
Once upon a time, objects had use. Now, they have aura.
Labubu doesn’t clean your house, store data, or solve problems. It just means something.
In the new economy of symbols: – Labubu is a TikTok backdrop – A status charm on a Balenciaga bag – A speculative asset flipping for $1,000 on resale sites
Function is obsolete. Semiotics is everything.
Labubu is pure vibe—cute chaos for an unlivable world. It’s the ideal product for a system that no longer produces value, only vibes.
Fashion’s Weaponization of Whimsy
If fashion is the oracle of capitalism, then Labubu is its plush prophecy.
High-end style has abandoned heritage for absurdity. “Kidcore,” “weird-cute,” “lowbrow luxe”—all symbols of rebellion against old money elegance. And Labubu, with its glitchy grin and deviant innocence, fits right in.
Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Lisa from BLACKPINK have all flaunted Labubu accessories. Not because it’s luxurious—but because it’s knowing. Ironic. Post-ironic. Meta-ironic.
In a world allergic to sincerity, cuteness becomes camouflage for power.
So, Are People Crazy?
No. They are spiritually bankrupt, algorithmically seduced, and starved for something—anything—that feels warm and loyal.
Labubu is the emotional pet of a society that can’t afford real connection anymore. It doesn’t ghost you. It doesn’t betray you. It doesn’t log off.
It just sits. Soft. Smiling. Waiting to be wanted.
We Are the Monsters
Labubu isn’t a glitch. It’s a signal. A warning wrapped in faux fur. It tells us what we’ve become:
Collectors of comfort. Gamblers of meaning. Children playing dress-up in adult collapse.
We thought we were buying toys. But we were buying therapy. We were buying tribe. We were buying time.
And in doing so, we told the truth we didn’t want to speak out loud:
We are the monsters now. And Labubu is the only one brave enough to love us anyway.
Entering 2025, AI is poised to continue disrupting, redefining and supercharging the business world. AI expert and Pioneers of AI host, Rana El Kaliouby, joins Rapid Response to share five bold AI predictions for the year ahead – from technological advancements to societal impact to investing. Whether you’re looking for AI to further enhance your work, portfolio, or personal productivity, Rana’s insights are the ideal primer for harnessing all the opportunity and potential at your disposal this year.
