On a bright Wednesday morning in King's Cross London, over two hundred marketing leaders gathered at Meta's London headquarters for Navigate: Now & Next 2026 - a day designed not to hand out answers, but to ask the right questions.
Across thirteen sessions, speakers from Diageo, Lloyds Banking Group, Bentley, Octopus Energy, DEPT, The Dots, Publicis, GAIN and beyond tackled the tensions reshaping modern marketing: between automation and humanity, between brand and performance, between the legacy of what brands have always been and the demands of what they need to become.
The day's was energised but clear-eyed, nobody was here to sell AI as a silver bullet. If anything, the recurring challenge from the stage was to resist the temptation of tool accumulation and focus instead on building clearer strategies, more intentional cultures, and more genuine connections with the people brands are trying to reach.
From Lydia Amoah's opening provocation about the billions of pounds hiding in plain sight within underserved multicultural audiences, to Peter Miller's closing session on how Octopus Energy is using technology to make customers feel genuinely less scared about the energy transition, the themes were consistent: in a world of increasing automation, the brands that win will be the ones that combine speed with clarity, data with humanity and performance thinking with long-term brand investment.
Five key themes from the day
The B2A era is already here and most brands aren't ready
Two separate sessions - from Publicis Media and Diageo, and from DEPT's Isabel Perry - converged on the same urgent point. AI agents acting on behalf of consumers are already intercepting the customer journey before a human decision is ever made. Brands must now think about AI discoverability with the same rigour they once brought to SEO. If your content, data, and digital architecture can't be read and processed by an AI agent, your brand simply won't be selected. The brands most at risk are those with complex propositions built around human navigation and relationship-based selling which is to say, a large number of the brands in that room.Community is a moat, not a marketing channel
Pip Jamieson of The Dots made the case with characteristic conviction: as generative AI floods every channel with content and algorithmic reach becomes increasingly unreliable, the scarcest asset in marketing is genuine human belonging. An audience is rented, a community is owned. The brands investing now in real community infrastructure - not social media groups, but genuine spaces of connection and peer-to-peer trust - are building something that no platform change or AI disruption can take away.The growth blind spot is costing brands real money
Lydia Amoah's opening session was a commercial wake-up call. Multicultural audiences are not a niche consideration - they are a mainstream commercial force that most planning frameworks were simply never built to see. The insight gap is structural, not intentional, and closing it doesn't just make brands more inclusive. It makes them measurably more profitable.Brand and performance are no longer separate disciplines
Scottish Widows and Broadlab delivered one of the day's most tangible proofs: applying performance media thinking to television, using nothing more exotic than postcode data, they achieved an 81% efficiency gain and one million app downloads. The session was a direct challenge to any marketing team still organising itself around a brand-versus-performance binary that the evidence simply no longer supports.The hardest work is still human
Whether it was Antoinette Dale Raymond on the internal obstacles that stop leaders from acting, or Nick Ford-Young on the need to redesign operating models rather than just accumulate AI tools, the day kept returning to the same truth: technology is not the bottleneck, leadership clarity, cultural courage, and organisational design are.Three things to do now
Audit your AI legibility
Pull up your brand's key product pages and ask honestly: could an AI agent accurately identify, describe, and recommend you based on what it finds? If the answer is uncertain, that is where to start.Map your workstreams before you buy another tool
Before the next AI tool lands on your desk, document the actual steps of your key marketing processes where human judgement genuinely matters, and where speed and automation could add value without losing quality.Get a senior leader posting on LinkedIn
Pick one, brief them lightly and start this week. The organic reach data is unambiguous, the competition is lower than on any comparable platform, and the cost of not doing it is quietly compounding.You can read the full session-by-session recap, including all the key insights and takeaways here.
THE CONTENT
Read insights from the day
Why the Future Belongs to Brands Built to Last
Heritage brands face a unique challenge: balancing innovation with the authenticity and trust that have been built over decades. This article explores how established brands can evolve, remain relevant, and thrive in an increasingly AI-driven and fast-changing world. An article from our Partner, GAIN
How AI is Reshaping the Consumer Journey
As AI transforms the way consumers discover, evaluate and purchase products, brands must rethink how they show up online. This session explored the growing influence of AI on shopping behaviour and what marketers need to do to remain visible and relevant in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace.. An article from our Partner, Publicis Groupe UK
THE VIDEOS
Members can access the recordings of the sessions
The Morning Sessions
The morning sessions at Navigate: Now and Next 2026 explored some of the biggest shifts reshaping marketing today, from AI driven consumer behaviour and digital twin technology to experimentation culture and untapped commercial growth opportunities.
The Mid-Morning Sessions
The mid-morning sessions at Navigate: Now and Next 2026 explored how brands are adapting to changing consumer behaviour, evolving media ecosystems and the growing influence of AI.
The Afternoon Sessions
The afternoon sessions at Navigate: Now and Next 2026 explored leadership, transformation and the changing role of marketing in a world shaped by AI, uncertainty and shifting consumer expectations.
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