You can sum up people’s mood in a number that bothers any C-level. The 2025 edition of Meaningful Brands shows that the majority wouldn’t mind if 78% of brands disappeared tomorrow. The data increased compared to the previous year and is not just a statistical detail.
There is a silent unease in the market. Correct campaigns, clean layouts, messages approved by committees and results measured in the short term. The feeling is empty. People look, pass by and forget. A sign of public fatigue or companies becoming complacent. Maybe both. This text follows an analytical line that I have defended for years, with my feet on the ground in Brazil.
Short-termism leaked from the market to creativity
According to Gartner, marketing budgets fell to 7.7% of companies’ revenue. The reaction was to shield paid media, which rose to 27.9% of the budget. Within this pie, digital came to lead with 57.1%, with a concentration in three engines that standardize the way of creating and buying (search with 13.6%, social with 12.2% and display with 10.7%).
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Marketing technology fell to its lowest level in a decade, and agencies and teams also lost space. When investment in capacity and differentiation shrinks, the natural path is to rely on the same performance machine that everyone uses. Anyone who looks like everyone else doesn’t stay in anyone’s memory.
The addiction to very short-term metrics appears in the feed, or rather, it does not appear in the feed. Rival IQ’s 2025 report shows a drop in engagement across all platforms measured (Instagram -16%, TikTok -34%, Facebook -33.3% and X -48%). The dispute is not just about media. It’s for meaning.
Pasteurization of branding
When the fear of making mistakes takes over, the discourse slips into a lukewarm center that seems right but doesn’t move anyone. Caution grew with the polarized climate and took brands to too neutral territories, where nothing is risked and everything sounds the same.
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The algorithm also pushes towards the middle. Smart platforms and feeds reward what looks like what has already worked. AI tools have accelerated production and, as a bonus, homogenization, with a drop in novelty in “creative” results.
Meanwhile, the brand codes became the same. Types, palettes, tone of voice and even naming have moved towards a generic center that erases identity. The Ipsos global study tested more than five thousand assets and found only 15% to be truly distinctive.
Boredom became an invisible banner
Algorithm optimizes what has already worked and rented traffic is expensive every month, so repeating has become a shortcut that impoverishes the brand in the long term. Brands became boring when they started talking to spreadsheets and not people. The public didn’t unlearn how to like brands, they just unlearned how to waste time on things that don’t make a difference.
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When the strategy returns to prioritizing creativity for business purposes, the brand goes off autopilot and indifference drops. Attention is no longer bought by impression and starts to be conquered by meaning.
