The 5-Question Filter for Every 2026 Marketing Trend
The Copywriter Column #236
Summary
Trend reports flood our inboxes every January, but most marketers consume them without a filter—treating predictions as instructions instead of inputs. This piece builds a durable framework for evaluating any trend through principles that don't expire: attention precedes action, clarity beats cleverness, trust compounds, relevance beats reach. You'll walk away with a 5-question filter you can apply to every "next big thing" that crosses your desk this year.
Every year around this time, the trend reports start rolling in.
“The Future of Marketing in 2026.”
“What Every Brand Needs to Know.”
“The Shifts You Can’t Afford to Miss.”
You’ll see them in your inbox, your LinkedIn feed, and your Slack channels. And if you’re like most marketers, you skim them, screenshot a few slides, maybe forward one to your team with a note that says “thoughts?”
Then you move on.
Or worse, you don’t.
You pivot.
You chase.
You rearrange your roadmap around something that sounded urgent in a PDF but never quite made sense for your business.
This happens every year. And every year, most of those predictions either don’t pan out or get applied so poorly they cause more confusion than clarity.
The problem isn’t that trend reports are useless. Some of them are genuinely insightful! The problem is that most people consume them without a filter.
They treat trends as instructions instead of inputs.
So instead of adding another prediction to your list, let’s build something more useful: a way to evaluate any trend through principles that don’t expire.
Principles as Filters
Trends describe what’s changing.
Principles describe what doesn’t.
That distinction matters more than it sounds.
A trend might tell you that short-form video is dominating attention, or that AI-generated content is flooding every channel, or that personalization expectations are rising.
Fine. But none of that tells you what to do.
It only tells you what’s happening.
Principles are different. A principle is a pattern that holds true regardless of the year, the platform, or the tool. It’s the law underneath the tactic.
Here are a few that have governed effective marketing for decades:
Attention precedes action. You can’t persuade someone who isn’t listening. This was true in print ads. It’s true in TikTok. And it will be true in whatever satisfies our 2035 version of “content.”
Clarity beats cleverness. If people don’t understand your message, they won’t act on it. Clever copy that confuses is just noise with better packaging.
Trust compounds over time. A single campaign can generate attention, but only consistency builds trust. And trust is what drives repeat behavior.
Relevance beats reach. A message that resonates with 1,000 right people will outperform one that reaches 100,000 wrong ones. Every algorithm update is just a new way of enforcing this truth.
Think of these as filters. When you know what’s true regardless of conditions, you can test anything new against it.
Your job isn’t to reject every trend, but rather ask: Does this new thing reinforce what I know works, or does it distract from it?
How to Use AI to Scan the Noise
AI can actually be useful here, not necessarily as a strategist, but as a filter.
Every year, dozens of agencies, consultancies, and platforms publish trend reports. Some are great! But most are repetitive, and no one has time to read them all.
So, AI can help you process volume without drowning in it.
A simple workflow:
Gather 5 to 10 trend reports from sources you respect: agencies, platforms like Google or Meta, and industry publications that cover your space.
Feed them into an AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT. Ask it to identify recurring themes across the reports. What predictions show up more than once? What language keeps appearing?
Then ask it to cluster those themes by category. Technology shifts. Consumer behavior changes. Platform updates. Format trends.
Review the output as raw material. Not as a recommendation!
What you’ll get is a compressed view of where consensus is forming – and that’s pretty valuable.
But consensus isn’t strategy. AI can tell you what people are predicting. It can’t tell you whether those predictions matter to your audience, your positioning, or your capacity to execute.
That part is still yours.
Resist the urge to outsource it to a robot.
The 2026 Trend Filter in Action
So you’ve got a trend in front of you. Maybe AI surfaced it, your CEO forwarded it, or maybe it’s been haunting your LinkedIn feed for weeks.
Before you act on it, run it through these 5 questions:
1. Does this align with a principle I already trust?
If a trend reinforces something durable, it’s probably worth paying attention to.
If it contradicts your foundational beliefs about how marketing works, be skeptical. Not closed-minded… just.. skeptical.
2. Does this solve a real problem my audience has?
Trends often describe shifts in behavior or technology, but not every shift is relevant to your customer. A trend can be real and still be irrelevant to your work!
3. Is the underlying behavior new, or just the format?
A lot of “new” trends are old behaviors wearing new clothes. People wanting to be entertained isn’t new. TikTok is just the current venue and recognizing this keeps you from overreacting to surface-level change.
4. What’s the downside of ignoring this for 12 months?
If the answer’s “not much,” well, that tells you something. Urgency is often manufactured. Most trends that matter will still be around next year, with more clarity and better tools.
5. Who benefits most from me believing this is urgent?
This one cuts through a lot of noise. Platforms, vendors, and consultants all have reasons to amplify certain trends, and while that doesn’t make them wrong, it should make you pause.
If a trend fails three or more of these questions, it’s honestly probably not worth your energy right now. If it passes all five, it might be worth serious exploration.
What Stays True Regardless
Here’s the part that never makes it into a trend report.
The fundamentals haven’t changed much in decades.
People still want to feel understood.
They still tune out irrelevance.
They still trust consistency over flash.
They still buy from people and brands they believe in.
Every year, new tools arrive that promise to change everything. Some of them do shift how work gets done, but they rarely shift why it works.
The marketers who adapt fastest aren’t the ones who chase every shiny new thing. They’re the ones who understand what doesn’t change, so they can recognize when something new actually matters.
You don’t need to predict 2026 perfectly. You just need to know what’s true no matter what happens.
That’s your filter.
Now, go use it.
Want to dive deeper into the principles that make copy actually work?
I’ve distilled 20+ years of marketing expertise into a free micro-course called The Minimalist Copywriter’s Playbook. It covers the 5 core principles I use every time I sit down to write – ones you can apply immediately.
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