With the New Year approaching and another twelve months closing out, it’s once again time to look ahead at the trends shaping the industry — and take stock of the year behind us.
As part of an annual series, we asked industry leaders to share what they expect in the year to come, along with their reflections on the year just past.
Next up, we speak with Anthony Baker, Managing Director at R/GA in Japan. He even gives us a bonus trend he sees on the horizon.
advertisement
He offers his outlook for the year ahead, his perspective on the year behind, and an update on how he fared with his 2025 New Year’s resolution.
Looking AheadWhat are three trends to look for in the coming year?1. Short-form rules the feed – but only systems (not clips) build brands
In 2025, short-form became the default attention format. YouTube Shorts alone scaled from ~70B daily views in 2024 to well into triple digits in 2025; TikTok still leads in time spent, even as minutes soften year-over-year.
Translation: the feed is saturated, and sameness is rising. In 2026, the winners will treat short video as an entry point to a designed brand system – short hooks that ladder to deeper formats, owned experiences, and measurable outcomes.
advertisement
This shift will be accelerated by AI slop – marketers who deploy the tech without craft and flood channels with low-effort content, making real craft the true differentiator. Views are vanity; progression is strategy.
The feed is saturated, and sameness is rising. In 2026, the winners will treat short video as an entry point to a designed brand system.
So what? Build a short-to-long content spine, localize by market, measure assisted effects (brand/search/CRM), and enforce creative codes so GenAI doesn’t erode your brand.
Sources: Emarketer, Metricool, DemandSage.
2. From rented reach to owned economics: the creator-community pivot
Creator payouts are migrating from ad-arbitrage to membership and owned communities. In 2025, Patreon and Kajabi each crossed $10 billion in lifetime creator payouts, and Patreon raised fees for new sign-ups – a maturity signal. In a world of agentic this shift becomes even more important; creators and communities are the parts of the internet that retain trust and identity when automated agents proliferate.
2026 is about building co-owned formats, revenue-sharing models, and community programming that compound over time.
For brands, treating creators as one-post vendors is obsolete. 2026 is about building co-owned formats, revenue-sharing models, and community programming that compound over time – especially across fragmented APAC markets.
So what? Shift budgets to 6–12-month creator ecosystems, negotiate IP/rights up front, and instrument community metrics (retention, paid conversion), not just impressions, to create sustainable, owned influence.
Sources: Tubefilter, The Verge
3. Brand identity systems are the only defense against “sameness at scale.”
Consumers are numb – 78% say brands could vanish and they wouldn’t care. At the same time, effectiveness science warns that short-termism destroys long-term growth, and GenAI often can’t produce on-brand content without strong guidance.
The answer isn’t another campaign; it’s brand identity as a system: distinctive codes made machine-readable, wired into product, service and performance so you scale without dissolving into the feed.
So what? Codify visual, verbal, sonic and UX assets for GenAI; align brand, product and media teams around them; and run quarterly drift audits across markets ensure consistency and preserve distinctiveness at scale.
Sources: Forbes, IPA, Gartner
4. Runner-up trend: “Conversational brand platforms go mainstream.”
2025 was the year “brand voice” stopped being a metaphor and became literal. As Gen AI copilots, assistants, and voice models maturing, leading brands launched conversational agents trained on their own tone, data, and service logic. Consumers didn’t just see a brand, they talked to it.
Gartner projects that by 2026, 40% of enterprise customer interactions will be fully automated through generative interfaces (up from 8% in 2023). What matters isn’t the automation alone, but personality. The move from chatbot scripts to authentic, on-brand conversation design separates the leaders from the rest.
The real ROI shifts from efficiency to experience: a consistent, always-on voice that can sell, serve, and entertain 24/7 without losing brand soul.
Smart organizations across APAC – from airlines to luxury houses – are training bespoke models on brand archives, product databases, and service tone to create owned conversational ecosystems. These brand agents are not just cost-savers; they amplify identity.
The real ROI shifts from efficiency to experience: a consistent, always-on voice that can sell, serve, and entertain 24/7 without losing brand soul. In 2026, every brand should ask: if your brand could talk, would anyone want to listen?
So what? Brands need to design intelligent systems that connect data, identity, and interaction into cohesive experiences. By codifying brand behavior, training models on proprietary assets, and orchestrating experience metrics (conversion, retention, satisfaction), companies can move from automated service to differentiated, intelligent experiences – staying ahead in the intelligence age.
Supporting data:
Gartner: 40% of enterprise interactions automated by Gen AI by 2026 (up from 8% in 2023).McKinsey: 60% of executives report “brand-consistent AI experiences” as top-five digital investment priority for 2025–2026.OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all launched brand-tunable voice/assistant APIs in 2025, triggering a wave of branded agent projects across APAC, EMEA, and the Americas.Looking BackYour favorite or least favorite trend of 2025?
Least Favorite Trend: “Personalization at Scale (Now with AI)”
The buzzword that refuses to die. Every year, “personalization at scale” gets rebranded – this time with a shiny AI sticker – yet it consistently underdelivers. In 2025, companies poured millions into tools promising one-to-one magic, only to discover that automating mediocrity doesn’t make it personal.
Without a clear customer strategy, clean data, and creative intent, AI-driven personalization just means faster spam. CIOs and CMOs alike reported disappointing ROI once the efficiency hype faded.
In 2025, companies poured millions into tools promising one-to-one magic, only to discover that automating mediocrity doesn’t make it personal.
That said, Gen AI and automation can enable truly personal stories at scale – but only when guided by creative thinking, storytelling, and smart technology. This isn’t a cost-cutting, scale-up shortcut; it’s a go-deeper, make-more-effort opportunity.
AI only delivers when it’s governed by strategy, design, clean data, and human judgment. Algorithms should amplify human insight, not replace it.
Favourite Trend: Creative Chaos is the New Order
2025 will be remembered as the year Gen AI fully broke the dam – and the internet drowned in delightfully unhinged creativity. With text-to-video, image, and audio tools becoming frictionless, suddenly, everyone became a creative director, meme-smith, or experimental filmmaker. The result: a glorious mess.
From deep-fried mashups of SpongeBob in cyberpunk noir, to hyper-real politicians singing anime openings, to TikToks written and voiced entirely by AI agents arguing with themselves – the year gave us absurdity, humor, and surprise in a way that the algorithm hadn’t managed in years.
But underneath the chaos was something healthy: creative liberation. For the first time in a decade, digital culture felt less polished, more human – ironic given it’s machine-made. The raw experimentation pushed brands to loosen up, too; even the most conservative marketers began embracing low-fi spontaneity, UGC-style humor, and faster iteration cycles.
2025 reminded us that creativity thrives on mess, and that imperfection can be far more engaging than perfection. The challenge now, heading into 2026, is to channel that energy – to balance chaotic creation with coherent brand systems.
References & Data:
Gen AI tool adoption jumped 400% YoY in 2025 (McKinsey Gen AI Survey).Over 50% of global internet users report interacting with AI-generated content weekly (Statista 2025).TikTok’s top 10 trends of 2025 included five AI-assisted formats (CapCut, Sora, Suno, and Runway were key drivers).If you could sum up 2025 in one emoji:
🔥
One of your favorite campaigns of 2025:
I loved a recent campaign spot by Maro Hair Styling product called 「あなたの愛する、あなたの人生を。. 」, roughly translated as “Your Beloved, Your Life”.
The creative execution was spot on; it frames hair-styling as an expression of life, taste, and passion. In this case, beautifully brought to life through music (I’m biased, being a bass player myself).
While I can’t say for sure, it looks like they may have used GenAI for the hair styling transitions and effects – possibly post-CGI – but entirely feasible with AI. The work is simple, bold, clear, yet deeply emotional.
To me, it’s a masterclass in combining technical innovation with human-centered storytelling.
What was your 2025 New Year’s Resolution, and did you keep it?
Make time for my own personal growth.
I have always been up for challenges, hard work, and continuous learning. But stepping into the role of MD at R/GA Japan really tested my capacity to operate at 1000% every single day. After a record-breaking 2024 performance, I made the conscious commitment to balance the demands of my role with time for personal growth.
It’s never easy, but I have stuck to that resolution. I’ve carved daily, weekly and monthly rituals to nurture myself through music, art, reading, learning, traveling, exploring and quality time with my partner, friends and family. These practices keep me energized, inspired, and ready to lead with curiosity and creativity.
Would you like to share your calls on the year ahead and your take on the year past? Drop us a line.
AloJapan.com