Marketing was built around campaigns because media was scarce, production was expensive and audiences could reliably be assembled around moments. None of those conditions still hold, yet brands continue organizing their budgets, agencies and creative processes around a model increasingly incompatible with how attention actually works.

In an era where almost every brand can operate its own channel, programming and community, the smarter question is no longer how to buy more attention, but how to create something people might voluntarily come back for.

KitKat’s partnership with Candy Crush Saga offers a useful case study in what happens when brands stop treating collaboration as a media shortcut and start treating it as a creative discipline, building an experience around a shared consumer truth rather than simply placing two familiar logos beside each other.

Cannabis has spent years waiting for regulation, platforms and consumers to catch up with the industry. In 2026, the bigger challenge is becoming clear: legalization can create a market, but only marketing discipline can create enduring brands.

The appointment of Tariq Hassan to the newly created role of Chief Marketing and Customer Growth Officer offers a useful glimpse at where the CMO function is heading, as brand building, customer experience, digital engagement and commercial growth increasingly become parts of the same job.