Digital marketing trends food and beverage brands cannot ignore in 2026
The specific 2026 digital marketing trends most relevant to food and beverage brands, prioritised for visual discovery and retail media coordination.
5 min read
C-suite expectations of marketing have shifted toward demanding the same rigorous, financially grounded accountability expected of other business functions, moving away from treating marketing as a creative function measured on its own separate, less scrutinised terms.
What has genuinely changed in these expectations
- Marketing is increasingly expected to demonstrate genuine, quantifiable business impact, not just creative output.
- Budget scrutiny of marketing spend has intensified, matching scrutiny applied to other major cost centres.
- Marketing leaders are increasingly expected to communicate in financial and business-outcome terms, not marketing-specific jargon.
A CFO does not need to understand engagement rate to approve a marketing budget increase, but they do need to understand what that spend genuinely returns in revenue or pipeline terms — marketing leaders who translate their work into that language consistently fare better in budget conversations.
Practical communication adjustments for marketing leaders
- Present marketing performance in the same financial language used elsewhere in the organisation.
- Connect specific marketing initiatives directly to their measured business outcome, not their marketing-specific metric alone.
- Be transparent about genuine uncertainty in measurement, rather than overstating confidence to appear more rigorous than the data supports.
How this shift affects marketing's organisational standing
Marketing leaders who successfully adapt to this expectation, per the ROI measurement maturity covered elsewhere, tend to gain stronger organisational credibility and budget support than those continuing to report in marketing-specific terms alone.
Frequently asked questions
Does this shift diminish the value of marketing's creative expertise?
No, creative expertise remains essential — the shift is in how that expertise's value is communicated and connected to business outcome, not a diminishment of the underlying creative skill itself.
How can marketing leaders build this financial communication skill?
Working closely with finance functions to understand how business impact is genuinely measured and communicated within your specific organisation is a practical starting point.
Does this expectation shift vary by industry or organisation size?
Generally the trend applies broadly, though the specific intensity and formality of financial scrutiny varies meaningfully by organisation size and industry.
If you want help positioning your marketing function's value to leadership, talk to our team.
The takeaway
Present marketing's value in the same financial and business-outcome language the rest of the C-suite uses for their own functions — marketing leaders who successfully do this consistently report stronger organisational standing than those who continue reporting in marketing-specific metrics alone.
Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.
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