From Synthetic Insights to Human Impact: 2026 Predictions From The Clarity Intelligence Unit

The ground beneath PR, marketing and communications is shifting fast. In 2025, the industry saw one of the biggest evolutions to the workplace, with AI being plugged into workflows across the board. Yes, AI is now part of the fabric of how we work, but it’s no longer the story. Audiences are becoming fatigued by the same bland, AI-generated outputs.

In 2026, the real differentiators will focus on how brands can blend intelligent tools with intelligent judgements, how brands show up in key moments, channels and conversations – these factors will determine success. 

In this piece, the Clarity Intelligence Unit explores the trends shaping our industry – from evolving audience insight and shifting buyer journeys and the rise of immersive experiences to communications as the organizational nerve centre. Ultimately, we outline the strategies that will help brands cut through the noise in 2026 and beyond.

Nick Smith, Market Intelligence Director:

• ‘Emotion as the new hard dataset’: As economic uncertainty drives consumers to prioritize wellbeing and immediate gratification, the most valuable first party data will be the tracking of stable, long term emotional anchors
• ‘The Audit Trail’: As AI systems deliver ever richer intelligence in an instant, their underlying reasoning is becoming increasingly opaque (i.e. the ‘black box’), making it harder to trace and justify the knowledge they deliver. Research and insight specialists will stop selling "The Answer" and start selling "The Audit Trail."  Premiums will be placed not on the speed of the insight, but on its provenance and accountability behind it.
• The Rise of the ‘Synthetic Ethnographer’: The cost and time of traditional qualitative research will be increasingly displaced by Generative AI agents capable of running synthetic focus groups and simulated studies.

Michael Gonzalez, SVP of Corporate Communications: 

• ‘Cognitive debt and the creative amplifier’: As AI becomes embedded in every creative workflow, the smartest organisations will treat it as a sparring partner to interrogate and challenge, not a crutch. Over‑reliance will create teams that can’t think for themselves, just when uniquely human qualities - original thought, lived experience and contextual judgement - matter most.
• ‘Charisma as the scarce skill set’: In a world where decks, scripts and talking points can be generated in an instant, the real differentiator will be the human who can read a room, project authority and empathy, and hold attention from a one‑to‑one conversation to a 500‑person town hall. Strategic communicators will invest as much in presence, storytelling and emotional intelligence as in tools, because reassurance and direction are delivered person‑to‑person, not platform‑to‑platform.
• ‘Comms as the strategy nerve centre’: As reputational risk, regulation and stakeholder scrutiny intensify, communications will become co‑authors of corporate strategy, working closely with the C‑suite. The most resilient organizations will use a clear view of their reputation to shape how they invest, who they buy, how they respond to regulators and what they build.

Marie Banks, VP of Content Strategy & Production:

• Mixed reality activations: Immersive, in person brand experiences will be a key trend as people seek a break from the digital world. Expect a rise in blended physical-digital activations – think MR (mixed reality) and XR (extended reality).
• The ‘human touch’: A renewed appreciation for the “human touch”. A surge in original non-digital art forms are being celebrated.  This strategy, sometimes referred to as the "Art Infusion Effect," allows brands to "borrow" the values of creativity and avant-garde associated with the art world. There is a wide spread celebration for unique styles and things being imperfect by design. 
• Cinematic storytelling: Taking the concept of what would make a great movie and applying it to branded content. Brands are creating compelling narratives or "micro-films" with clear story arcs and character development. This helps brands break through the noise and resonate with audiences on an emotional level.
• Distinct hero visuals and hero messaging: This will be increasingly crucial to driving brand originality and authenticity. You need to know how you want to show up before you can seek to replicate and roll out.

Rob Barnes, SEO technical lead:

• Optimizing content authors: We know that AI is fundamentally changing search and therefore, the strategies to maximize brand visibility are also evolving. As such, optimizing content authors is gaining as much value as optimizing the content itself. Authorship has long been a staple of SEO. Attributing your content to a real life expert aligns with Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness) guidelines as well as a source of trust for LLMs. However, the focus is heavily weighted towards the content produced, rather than the author themselves. This year, I predict a shift toward author optimisation, focusing on how we demonstrate the expertise of our authors, beyond just creating a brief bio page and adding a link to their LinkedIn profile. This will require input from multiple channels to build the author's profile for the topics they’re talking about and how this relates to the business. Teams will need to be more mindful of how their experts are perceived and what topics they have credibility in before even starting to create a content calendar.
• A shift in the buyer journey: The B2B tech buyer journey will rely more heavily on third party sites than the brand site. B2B tech buyers have more tools than ever to compare and contrast the various platforms available to them. LLMs and Google search results are focusing more heavily on review platforms to help them gain an unbiased view of the most suitable solution for them. To show up where buyers are looking, brands will need to identify the most relevant platforms and cultivate the narrative on them.
• Technical content as prime SEO fuel: Technical documentation, integrations and implementation content will become prime SEO assets. LLMs allow B2B tech buyers to self-educate deep into the funnel. Therefore, top level marketing content will be less impactful and the more detailed technical documentation will likely have a stronger bearing on conversion.

Andrew Kernahan, SVP Public Affairs:

• Geopolitical headwinds: 2026 will only see current challenging geopolitical trends and global headwinds accelerate. The continued focus on digital ‘sovereignty’, free trade negotiations and tariffs, and tensions between the old order and new, will impact companies, especially those operating cross-border or in high-profile sectors like tech and where the pressure to ‘pick-a-side’ will increase. The UK will need to use all its craft to chart a middle path approach as it balances this with greater collaboration with Europe and a reset with China.    
• Tech policy and regulation highlights: These will include strengthening of cyber security rules, including the passing of a Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to bring more organizations into scope of regulations. A long-awaited all-encompassing AI Bill will be replaced by a more targeted issue-by-issue approach using existing powers and regulators on areas like safety, copyright and governance. Having put tech at the heart of its growth agenda, the government will need to balance the pressure to clamp down on platforms and big tech - campaigners will be looking at the impact of Australia’s smart phone ban and how Europe uses its enforcement powers - against its relationship with the US.
• A ‘messy’ political landscape: Politically, the UK in 2026 will see significant elections in the devolved nations and locally that will see Reform make more progress, alongside other smaller parties. The development of a five-party system will give us some messy results that will lead to more informal coalitions ahead of the next General Election in a few years time. Labour’s poor performance, and challenges from both the Greens on the left and Reform on the right, will ratchet up the pressure on the Prime Minister, expect to hear lots of grumbling about a leadership change in May.

Phil Wade, VP of Measurement & Analytics:

• Conversational analytics: This will become an expected part of any marketing department's reporting solutions and processes.
• A shift in performance marketing: The effectiveness of ‘performance marketing’ that isn’t supported by a strong brand campaign, will continue to decline.
• Multi-touch measurement methodology: The reliance on a single measurement methodology will become less accepted as the default with more businesses triangulating their measurement across multi-touch attribution, marketing mix modeling, and incrementality testing, for more informed decision making.

In 2026, the brands that win won’t be the ones shouting the loudest about AI, but the ones quietly using it to get closer to real people – their emotions, behaviors and expectations – and to make braver, better‑informed decisions.

For more information on how Clarity can support your business navigate the ever-changing landscape, please get in touch with our team.