15 Years of Foresight Strategy

The Foresight Roundtable

At Foresight, we’re celebrating 15 years by looking ahead to the next 15 months. We brought together senior marketing leaders from Fortune 500 CPG brands around the world and talked to them about the challenges we’re all wrestling with. We asked questions about consumers, technology, and the shape of growth ahead. Candid, insighful, and occasionally contradictory, what they told us should make every CMO a little uncomfortable. And excited for what’s to come.

Just a Few Brands Represented on Our Panel

What Separates Growing Brands from Stalling Brands

In an increasingly volatile economy, what separates brands that keep growing from brands that stall?

Summary

Growing brands stay pointed outward. They solve a real consumer problem and make the case for value well beyond low price. Product quality, relevance, innovation, cultural connection, disciplined execution, and adapting quickly are all essential. Balancing short-term performance with long-term brand building, they protect their core consumers and unit growth and keep pack-price architecture and channel strategy moving with the market.

Brands stall when they turn inward — rigid, over-promotional, leaning on price increases and cost cuts to manufacture growth. The winning formula pairs an enduring brand promise with commercial flexibility, disciplined investment, and a willingness to reinvent how growth gets delivered.

Expert Insights

I'm not sure brands are actually growing. I think companies grow by managing their product portfolio and product efficacy. Product efficacy is used as a very broad term and includes the simple notion of whether the product resonates with the market of customers and consumers.

There is not and never will be a substitute for a great product and marketing cannot get you out of that problem. Consumers will quickly see that, and growth will in fact stall. The gap would have been longer in the past. Addressing consumer needs and frictions will prevail.

Brands that stall tend become too internally focused. The ones that grow stay externally obsessed. The brands that continue to grow are the ones that protect what makes the brand distinctive, stay focused on creating value for consumers while having the flexibility to adapt how they deliver it. They are consistent but not rigid. It's about adapting without losing your identity.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Sustainable growth follows a disciplined sequence: define what to achieve, decide where to play, and establish how to win. It starts with absolute clarity on the business target — revenue, volume, profit, or some combination. From there, look beneath surface-level trends to understand real market dynamics, identify the highest-leverage opportunities, size them, and choose the combination that can close the gap between today’s performance and your ambition.

Each priority then earns a precise plan: which consumers and occasions to address, which needs and benefits to own, and how to turn those choices into channel strategy, pack-price architecture, and execution. Growth gets far more predictable when strategy and commercial delivery are connected. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

Consumer Behavior and Future Sources of Growth

What surprised you most about consumer behavior over the past few years, and what do most marketers still misunderstand about where growth will come from?

Summary

Consumers are resilient but far more selective. They trade down and pay up at the same time, rewarding meaningful value wherever they find it — quality, convenience, wellness, trust, or emotional payoff. Social commerce, creator influence, eroding loyalty, and faster switching are rewriting how choices get made.

On one point, the roundtable was nearly unanimous: price-led revenue growth of recent years has run its course. The next wave must come from volume, new households, new occasions, relevant innovation, frictionless conversion, and sharper channel execution.

Where leaders split was on what drives the final choice: The enduring pull of emotional brand equity or the rising dominance of product performance, availability, and price.

Expert Insights

What surprised me most is how quickly people have moved from just discovering products to actually buying right where they discover them—whether that’s social, search, or marketplaces. Expectations are just higher now. People want things fast, relevant, and validated by other consumers. As for growth, I think it's likely to come from our brands showing up where people are already making decisions and actually connecting that to sales, not necessarily from better media or increased media spend (though this will have a role). The ones who figure out how to use their own data and tie it all the way through to conversion are the ones that will likely win.

Marketers mistook pricing led growth with equity gains.

1) The rapid shift from traditional digital marketing to creators and short form being one of the most powerful tools. 2) The changing importance of classic brand building and "strong brands" vs trend brands.

The rise of social commerce, loss of trust in information/news/source, pace of AI growth and adoption rate amongst consumers.

Consumers in printing want to spend less, and to do so are willing to spend more upfront. This observation shows an opportunity to serve them at different price points with different business models, from subscriptions-based product and services, to cartridge-less printers like our HP Tanks, and traditional printers. I think future growth will sit at the intersection of solving real friction points and reinforcing trust.

Consumer behavior is resilient in many ways and proving adaptive. Consumers are holding businesses to higher standards on the management of the journey and overall, their data. I think most marketers forget that growth will still come from your core products, but increasing value will require meeting elevated expectations to command a premium or price increase.

Lack of understanding on where to recruit consumers from; what will bring potential consumers into our franchises?

How quickly consumers have learned to move between seemingly contradictory behaviors. They may trade down in one category while continuing to pay a premium in another. They are looking for value, but value no longer means price alone—it can also mean convenience, quality, health benefits, emotional reward, or confidence that a product will deliver.

The next phase of growth will need to be much more volume-led by increasing penetration, broadening usage occasions, strategic PPA and innovation that solves real consumer problems.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Brand value has become a relative concept. The question is no longer whether consumers can afford a product, it’s whether the brand gives them a compelling reason to choose it. Consumers pay a premium when three things line up: the product is relevant, its value is validated through channels they trust (often creators, sponsorships, and media), and the brand is there at the moment of decision.

Communication alone won’t carry it. The promise has to connect to execution — the right product, pack, format, price, and channel showing up in the right place at the right time. Brands that align value creation, value communication, and value capture stop competing on price and start growing profitably. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

Where AI Will Create the Greatest Marketing Advantage

AI is changing everything — but where will it create the greatest real advantage in marketing: efficiency, creativity, consumer understanding, or commercial decision-making?

Summary

In the near term, AI’s clearest win is efficiency — accelerating production, analysis, testing, media execution, and routine work. The more durable prize is deeper consumer understanding and sharper commercial decision-making: integrating data, catching emerging signals, pinpointing audiences, and converting insight into action.

AI can strengthen creativity through ideation, prototyping, and testing, but it doesn’t replace originality, craft, or human relationships. As access to AI becomes universal, advantage shifts to what can’t be commoditized. The quality of the questions you ask, the proprietary data you hold, the judgment you apply, and how fast your organization can act.

Expert Insights

Commercial decision making when it creates one source of truth and breaks down functional barriers.

For me, what separates insight from information overload is whether it actually changes a decision. There is more data than ever, so just having access to it doesn’t mean much anymore. If the data is not helping the team decide where to invest, what to stop doing or what to change, then it's likely just noise.

The ability to de-average at scale consumers to sharpen insights and generate intimacy.

Biggest shift will be zero latency learning from real time signals, to help shape real time decision making for deeper consumer intimacy.

The competitive advantage will not come from simply having access to AI. It will come from combining proprietary data, strong strategic questions, organizational judgment, and the ability to act on insights faster than competitors.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

The greatest opportunity is to fuse the scale and depth of AI with the experience and judgment of marketers. AI can integrate vast datasets, search wider than any team could, and surface connections that were previously invisible. But it can’t turn those connections into a complete growth plan on its own. The advantage shows up when marketing, insights, analytics, strategic planning, and commercial teams work side by side in structured sessions, using AI to accelerate the analysis while people supply context and experience. That’s how consumer understanding gets connected to communications, channel execution, pack-price decisions, and commercial reality. The winning model isn’t art or science. It’s a deliberate fusion of both. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

Strategic Insight vs. Information Overload

As data becomes more accessible, what will separate strategic insight from information overload?

Summary

Strategic insight isn’t measured by how much data you have. It’s measured by the decision it drives. The signals worth chasing are the ones that materially move consumer choice, revenue, pipeline, or strategic action. AI can organize information and surface patterns, but it takes domain expertise, business context, common sense, and human judgment to turn any of it into meaning.

As data and tools become universal, the edge moves to proprietary interpretation: connecting different forms of evidence, challenging assumptions, and translating findings into clear choices. An insight only becomes strategic when it improves a decision and leads to more precise, more effective action.

Expert Insights

The human ability to connect disparate thoughts. We need marketers who can connect various paradigms.

Finding biggest commonalities while micro target for a unique connection and relevancy with consumers.

Don't ask it for the answer. Ask it for the factors that matter, and then let humans start asking some what if, possibly interacting with the machine.

The biggest trap here is that data, and technology (AI), etc., are SO accessible, how do I create insights that are proprietary? How do I create unique, ownable insights that give me advantaged strategies in the market? I'm not sure exactly what the best approach is, but somehow finding a way-- through a balance of human creativity and feel versus the broad power and omniscience of AI-- to take the same world everyone else sees and make it your own.

More data doesn't mean better business decisions. Actually, it never has. As AI democratizes information, judgment becomes the new competitive advantage. The winners won't be the organizations with the most data, but the ones that combine human understanding, business context, and the courage to make clear choices. Data can inform decisions, but only people create meaning, alignment, and ultimately, growth.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Strong insights are defined by the decisions they enable. The point isn’t to make an interesting observation. It’s to make a better choice about whom to target, which needs to address, which occasions to prioritize, how to communicate, where to activate, and which channel, pack, and price configuration will win. An insight is only as valuable as the link between evidence, decision, and execution. So insight work should be built around explicit decision questions from the start, with the resulting choices carried all the way through the marketing and commercial plan. Winning comes from finding the right insight, connecting it to the right decision, and executing it consistently. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

Curiosity and Human Judgment in an AI-First World

Do curiosity and human judgment become more important, or less, in an AI-first world?

Summary

More important. Decisively. As AI makes processing and answer-generation universal, differentiation moves to the human work: asking better questions, imagining new possibilities, challenging automated outputs, and judging what’s right for a specific business and consumer context.

Human judgment brings empathy, ethics, experience, commercial understanding, risk appetite, and accountability. Routine tasks may need less human hand-holding, but judgment becomes decisive wherever there’s uncertainty, trade-offs, originality, brand meaning, or entrepreneurial risk. AI generates possibilities; people decide which ones are meaningful, distinctive, and worth pursuing.

Expert Insights

We humans have the responsibility to continue molding the future. Art is more important than ever.

100% more important. Add to that risk taking, humility and passion.

Curiosity and judgment become paramount. How on earth could I possibly win vs competition if I'm doing the same analyses, leveraging the same AI tools, and the same data, as everyone else? Without curiosity and human judgment, you'll see AI led competitors rise and fall as their advantage isn't sustainable.

Where curiosity and human judgment will reign supreme is where risk is required. If you put in AI - I'd like to start a business making bubbly sugar water marketed as a pick me up and charge a significant price to people for it...the AI will likely say that doesn't make sense. Monster, Coca-Cola & Poppi would never have been born out of AI.

In an AI-first world, the strongest marketers will not be those who simply use the technology most frequently. They will be those who know when to trust it, when to challenge it, and how to combine its capabilities with human imagination and judgment.

AI will become increasingly good at generating answers. That makes curiosity - the ability to ask the right questions - and judgment - the ability to make sound decisions in context - so much more important. Business decisions are rarely about finding the "right" answer. They're about weighing trade-offs, understanding people, navigating uncertainty, and making choices that align with a company's strategy and values. AI can accelerate those decisions, but it can't own them. We as leaders are accountable for how to move forward.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

In an AI-first world, advantage depends on preventing strategic convergence. When every company runs the same tools over the same data, the default result is the same conclusions and the same strategies. Differentiation comes from pairing science with the human art of curiosity, humility, imagination, and informed risk-taking.

Marketing, insights, analytics, finance, and commercial teams should work together in carefully designed sessions, using AI as a shared accelerator. It can’t be a substitute for judgment. The goal is to challenge the obvious conclusion, explore the alternatives, and turn diverse expertise into distinctive choices. AI democratizes the inputs. Human collaboration determines whether the output is conventional or genuinely differentiating. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

The Evolution of Pricing, Packaging, and Channel Strategy

How are pricing, packaging, and channel strategy evolving as consumer expectations and economic pressures shift?

Summary

Pricing, packaging, and channel strategy are converging into a single integrated value system. Economic pressure doesn’t produce uniform trade-down behavior. Consumers want affordable entry points and real value, and they’ll still pay premiums for quality, wellness, convenience, experience, or emotional reward.

That calls for a differentiated pack-price architecture: smaller entry packs, larger value formats, premium tiers, and channel-specific assortments across club, discount, convenience, e-commerce, and on-premise. Rising price transparency, channel switching, and AI-enabled shopping will squeeze undifferentiated middle brands hardest.

Expert Insights

Companies understand that inflationary pressures are changing buying behaviors. Value conscious Consumers are trading down, at the same time, health-conscious consumers are willing to pay a premium for nutritional benefits.

They need to evolve so much faster. We are still scratching the surface to cater to all people, occasions, moments and channels. We have been saddled by supply chain constraints from the Covid-era and the human excuse is to generalize to one size fits all.

We are seeing more flexibility across pricing and packaging to help people manage what they spend—smaller packs to lower the entry point, bigger packs to deliver value. But at the same time, we see brands continuing to put more focus on channels where people are already shopping and making decisions. It’s less about reach and more about being present when and where the moments matter most.

A K-shaped economy is leading to dual consumer streams requiring at least two distinct pathways on packaging in specific channels capturing value.

We are seeing a significant shift to affordability & experience. Channels like Costco, Wal-Mart and Discount chains are booming and so are packages priced at certain magic price thresholds. Ironically On Premise is also growing - showing people are willing to spend on experience.

The opportunity is to design an integrated portfolio that serves different consumer needs and shopping missions without creating unnecessary complexity or weakening the brand.

Pricing, packaging, and channel strategy are not separate commercial levers but part of one integrated value creation system. Consumers are facing economic pressure, but they're not simply trading down. They're making more intentional choices, constantly weighing price against convenience, quality, experience, and trust. That means growth comes from delivering the right value proposition for the right consumer, in the right channel, at the right price versus relying on pricing alone.

E-commerce will drive pack assortments for the shopper - Costco packaging and 7/11 packaging can coexist on the same e shelf - prices are now more transparent and marketers have to personalize a lot more.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Affordability is being redefined by the renewed power of pack-price architecture and channel strategy. Consumers no longer judge value only by comparing prices on a shelf. Brands can now reach them across physical and digital touchpoints while needs and decisions are still forming. A well-designed, well-executed PPA and channel strategy puts the right pack, format, and price in the right place for the specific occasion, moving competition away from simply being the cheapest option. When the product and proposition meet the need at the exact moment of choice, relevance can outweigh absolute price — and support a premium. Getting PPA and channel execution right is central to both accessibility and profitable growth. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

Sponsorships and Measurable Business Impact

How should brands rethink sponsorships and partnerships when the goal is no longer visibility alone, but measurable business impact?

Summary

Sponsorships should be built as business platforms, not visibility purchases. Start with a defined outcome — trial, conversion, loyalty, pipeline, customer access, cultural relevance, price premium, or a new commercial opportunity — and a clear measurement framework in place before anything is signed.

The strongest partnerships create a credible connection between brand, property, and audience. Value has to extend well past logo exposure — into content, experiences, retail activation, transactions, customer and employee engagement, and coordinated cross-functional execution. Visibility still matters, but it’s worth far more when it’s tied to authentic cultural participation and measurable commercial action.

Expert Insights

Sponsorship and partnerships are part of the marketing mix which together with paid media, organic media, promotions etc. will be measured for performance. Nothing is for “visibility only".

Brands need to "own the passion" vs "a sponsorship" - that is much more multi-faceted, authentic and longer lasting.

In our B2B space, technical influencers are critical.

They should view sponsorships as platforms with potential to impact all areas of the business, not just marketing. Visibility will continue to be part of the benefits of sponsorships. Still, contracts must evolve to provide incremental value to marketing.

Visibility is a dated perspective. What matters is experiences that create deeper depth of loyalty resulting in more immediate shift in behavior.

Find opportunities that marry brand audience needs with properties/partners that can drive content and experiences fans crave and engage with.

Small brands do well with sponsorships to drive visibility. The bigger the brand, the more it needs to pivot from visibility to activating the passion point underneath the partnership in a meaningful way.

The strongest partnerships connect three things: a credible role for the brand, meaningful value for the audience, and a clear path to business impact. They should be designed as integrated growth platforms rather than isolated media events. That means connecting the partnership to retail activation, digital engagement, experiential marketing, innovation, employee participation, customer programs, and measurable consumer behavior.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

A strong sponsorship strategy follows the same disciplined process: clarify what to achieve, decide where to play, determine how to win. Begin with specific business objectives and the measures that will prove success. Then identify the passions that matter most to the consumers you want to reach, and find where the brand has an authentic fit, a credible point of view, and a real ability to add value. Only then does the search for assets begin — a sport, a stadium, an artist, an event, a show, a cultural platform. From there, assess every opportunity through one consistent, data-driven framework that evaluates the audience it reaches, its sales-impact potential, contract strength, incrementality to the portfolio, and cost versus expected value. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.

Advice for the Next Generation of Growth Leaders

What advice would you give the next generation of CMOs and growth leaders navigating constant disruption?

Summary

The next generation has to stay grounded in consumers and enduring growth fundamentals while treating disruption as a permanent operating condition. Continuous learning, experimentation, agility, and fast course correction are non-negotiable. And so is the discipline not to chase every new tool or trend without a clear strategic purpose.

Technology fluency matters. But, technology is a means, never the work itself. Tomorrow’s CMOs need broader commercial range across brand, sales, finance, pricing, innovation, data, and operations. Stronger cross-functional collaboration and real clarity on the mandate from the CEO and board is crucial, too. The leaders who thrive will stay curious, stay human, and stay comfortable deciding with imperfect information.

Expert Insights

This still is the best time to be a marketer. Focus on what matters and rethink decision workflows.

Build a longer table with the other functions with no silos. talk with real consumers and real customers daily.

We are responsible for understanding the world around us, understanding consumers' motivations and desires, connecting brands with culture, and so much more. My advice is "be fluent in tech, but remember tech is a tool, not the work".

View the world in shades of uncertainty and lean into it.

Embrace disruption as the new playground.

Keep learning, be out there, put yourselves into the shoes of the consumer and the competition, invest in talent, stay flexible and be agile. If you make mistakes, course correct and don’t be afraid, but learn.

Be very clear about the marketing mandate you are receiving from the board and the CEO. Fulfill it relentlessly and make new mistakes that punch you in the face.

Call Foresight.

My advice would be to remain grounded in the fundamentals while becoming comfortable with constant change. Technology, media, channels, and consumer expectations will continue to evolve, but growth still begins with understanding people, solving meaningful problems, building distinctive brands, and delivering value better than the competition. Do not confuse certainty with leadership. During disruption, the role of a leader is not to have every answer. It is to create clarity, make thoughtful decisions with imperfect information, and give the organization the confidence to move forward.

Technology will continue to evolve. Human leadership will continue to matter even more now. The future belongs to leaders who are deeply human and not afraid.

Listen to your consumers constantly and separate fads from trends.

THE FORESIGHT PERSPECTIVE

In a world where experimentation, failure, learning, and rapid adaptation matter more than a perfectly drafted strategy, foresight becomes more important, not less. Foresight is the ability to envision multiple plausible futures, understand how each could reshape the brand and the business, and use that understanding to make better choices today.

CMOs should define the future they want to create, act toward it, and preserve the options that let them adjust fast as signals reveal which future is actually emerging. That’s what keeps agility from becoming random motion and risk-taking from becoming recklessness. Leaders who combine experimentation with structured foresight move faster without losing direction — staying true to the fundamentals while actively shaping the future instead of reacting to it. Learn more ->

Check out the roundtable summary here.