This industry report explores what 150 leaders across six industries shared about how they were using print to stand out in a digital-first world. For a legacy channel many wrote off, print is having a remarkably good run as a competitive lever. Organizations across industries are reporting increases in their print spending to invest in high impact moments where physical presence, memory and brand consistency matter most. While digital channels remain a workhorse for speed, urgency and scale, print has evolved into a strategic tool for tactile brand experiences that reach an audience and stays with them.

With EU Directive 2024/825, “Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition” (EmpCo), the requirements for sustainability-related advertising are increasing significantly. General environmental claims without clear context or robust evidence will no longer be permissible; using them in communications therefore carries considerable risk.

EmpCo applies across the EU from 27 September 2026.

When you pause briefly in the supermarket to pick up a product, you often decide within seconds whether to put it in your shopping cart. Packaging, colours, and words immediately convey how sustainable a product appears to be. Terms such as “environmentally friendly”, “sustainable”, or “eco-friendly” are quick reference points but empty slogans.

Consumers find it difficult to assess which statements are trustworthy, and which are primarily intended to influence their purchasing decisions. This is where the Empowering Consumers Directive (EmpCo) comes in. It tightens and clarifies existing rules against misleading environmental communication by creating standards across the EU.

Doubling down on first-party data and keeping closer tabs on communities are some of the ways to preserve brand relevance, according to new Gale research. Adopters of artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini are starting to set more of their brand preferences within chatbots. In the grand vision of technology developers, agentic AI will eventually identify relevant products, seek them out online and even shop, all with relatively little direct user input. That poses significant challenges to building and maintaining brand loyalty, according to new findings from the Gale agency.

“People talk a lot about community, but nobody really knows how to build one,” says Naomi Emiko, co-founder of marketing agency TNGE Global. Even if the infrastructure behind it is a mystery, she predicts “community” will remain a buzzword for brands this year. To figure it out, she envisions them more actively participating in conversations to flesh out where and when they fit into consumers’ lives and speak with their audience rather than at them. “Brands need to understand that they’re part of an ecosystem,” she says. “They’re not an entity that exists on an island.”

Even with unprecedented access to data, ecommerce marketers are still struggling to turn insights into action. As consumers move fluidly across channels and the path to purchase grows increasingly fragmented, decision-making has become both more complex and more delayed. Drawing on a survey of 500+ marketing leaders across the US and UK, this report uncovers why data isn’t translating into confident strategy, the true cost of decision paralysis, and how leading brands are moving faster and making smarter decisions to drive growth.

Email performance slipping? The issue may not be your campaigns — it’s likely channel overlap, weak orchestration and hidden operational gaps. While no one has claimed email marketing is dying for many, many years, some marketers have become increasingly concerned with performance declines, despite the channel generating returns on investment that are often at least twice as high as most other channels.

Turn your product feeds into revenue streams. Get expert insights on data, branding, and marketing strategies that help you grow sales across every major ecommerce channel. Created by BigCommerce and Feedonomics , this guide breaks down what it takes to succeed across today’s top sales and ad channels.

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