First week of 2026. First day back. First meeting.

I’m less of a retrospective guy and more of a forward-looking one. I like to project myself, but also to envision the possibilities, what’s coming next, share it with the teams, and build the best possible cohesion to get there.

I mentioned it a few editions of this newsletter ago: I’m also a milestones guy. The end of a calendar year, the start of a fiscal year, the “back-to-school” in September, June and the arrival of summer, etc.

It’s often a time for reflection, for tidying up projects and initiatives, and for projection.

We don’t know exactly what the next 12 months will be made of, but certain major themes will be present.

Very present.

Want to get your content team up to speed on this? Organize a team workshop or one-on-one coaching with an expert of our team. You can also book Alexandre to come and speak at your event!

I’m putting them down here, rapid-fire, in no particular order, just as they come to me. Themes that will fuel our team members, our partners, and our clients too.

AI

I’m putting it here, first, because everyone is talking about it. It’s a theme that colours everything else in our industry. The entire planet is watching us as an industry to see how we will adapt, what will truly be disrupted, and what will remain.

If, from my point of view, 2024 was the year of wonder and novelty, 2025 was the year of trials, of discovering limits, and of the rapid growth of large models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, DeepSeek, etc.).

2026 will be the year of implementation. Where large models will be less important and those who build products on top of them will make headlines (hello Figma and Canva!).

It will be a year of testing, once again, but in a product context rather than a model context. Quietly, every organization will finish the year with products developed internally, specific to their reality and their industry.

The challenge that follows will be the necessity of managing these products supporting the communication, marketing, brand, and editorial teams.

Struggling to get performance out of your content? If your content team is living through content chaos on a daily basis, schedule a quick call with us to discuss Content strategy and content operations. We can help you get all your ducks in a row.

We are already developing these products here, at Espresso-Toast, and we are lucky to have the internal talent to maintain and grow them. We do it for ourselves, but we will also do it for our clients and partners.

Operations

We’ve talked about it for many years on this platform, but our way of managing marketing and communication has changed. The rhythms and cadences are not the same, and brand architecture has also changed.

A brand now has much more internal capacity than it did before. In many cases, internal agencies have been created, talent hired, and work methods implemented.

The collaboration that has always existed between agencies and brand leadership is evolving. The posture of the traditional agency is changing and must adapt. The old reflexes of making a brief, sending it to the agency, and waiting for returns to comment and approve are over.

It is a real partnership, a dance where each leads at one moment or another.

On our side, our posture of supporting internal teams will become increasingly relevant. We have been complementing internal capabilities at our clients for a long time, both in terms of thinking and execution, and this year, we are going to go even further on this level.

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Language

“There have never been more words written than today.”

It’s Olivier who regularly repeats these words to the teams.

We mustn’t forget it: even though for nearly 10 years we’ve been told that video is the future, we’ve realized over the past 24 months that words are truly important.

It’s easier than ever to produce written content, and it is this written content that will feed the famous models we were talking about a moment ago. For a brand to stand out, it will need to have a singular angle in its market. It will need to be present, but in its own way.

With a defined and clear linguistic identity.

I demonstrated this in a talk given at an Infopresse forum in December. Linguistic identity is essential and is becoming more important than ever for a brand.

Every brand has a well-defined brand (and graphic) identity, but linguistic identity has always been the neglected sibling of that famous “brand guide.”

The coming months will allow us to deploy our linguistic identity model, backed by Espresso’s 37 years of linguistic services. A rigorous and robust model, which will allow brands to have solid foundations, enabling them to differentiate and distinguish themselves in a context where there is more and more text and AI slop. 

Strategy

Through all of this, and these 3 observations above, one expertise remains just as relevant: the capacity to elevate and think.

Strategy remains at the heart of what must exist for a brand.

Without strategy, we are reactive, we lack clarity, and vision is missing.

However, here too, we must remain lucid. Strategy, as we knew it a decade or two ago, has evolved a lot. And it will continue to do so.

Today’s strategies must be anchored in what the business wants to do, where it wants to go, but they must be flexible, constantly having the capacity to adapt to market and platform reactions.

This reality brings clear needs for strategic structure, but also for work processes (and analysis) and talent training.

It is no longer an instruction manual that production teams will have to work with; it will be guiding principles, a clear direction, and it is from these elements that they will have to execute.

There you have it. 4 high-level observations for what’s coming, what is even already here. Our industry is evolving, and so are we.

We are ready.

I love the photo at the top of this text. No parking. It’s not the time to park. It’s time, more than ever, to take the stairs and the elevator.

Oh, and Happy New Year to you!