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
The metaverse generated substantial marketing investment and attention during its peak hype period, and an honest retrospective reveals a familiar pattern: most of the genuine, surviving value came from specific, practical applications, while the broader, more speculative metaverse vision itself has largely faded from serious marketing planning.
What genuinely survived the hype cycle
- Virtual events and experiences for specific, engaged niche communities.
- Gaming-adjacent brand partnerships within established gaming platforms.
- Some AR and VR applications that found genuine, specific use cases independent of the broader metaverse framing.
What largely disappeared
Broad, ambitious 'build a persistent virtual world presence for your brand' initiatives, and significant investment in speculative virtual real estate, have largely receded from serious marketing conversation as the practical audience and use case failed to materialise at the scale the hype suggested.
The metaverse hype cycle followed a familiar pattern: broad, speculative vision faded, while narrow, genuinely useful applications quietly survived and continued developing on their own practical merit.
The lesson worth extracting for evaluating future hype cycles
Evaluate any emerging trend on its specific, demonstrable use case and genuine audience size today, rather than the broader speculative narrative surrounding it — this same discipline is worth applying to whatever the next major marketing hype cycle turns out to be.
Frequently asked questions
Is metaverse marketing investment now a wasted category entirely?
Not entirely — specific, surviving applications (virtual events, gaming partnerships) retain genuine value, evaluated on their own current merit rather than the broader metaverse framing.
Should businesses avoid AR and VR given the metaverse hype fading?
How can I avoid overinvesting in the next hyped trend?
Apply the same discipline covered in our evaluating a marketing trend guide — assess specific, demonstrable use cases rather than broad narrative excitement.
If you want an honest assessment of an emerging marketing opportunity, talk to our team.
The takeaway
Evaluate any current metaverse-adjacent opportunity on its own genuine merit today, not on residual enthusiasm from the earlier hype cycle — most of what survived did so because it solved a real problem, not because of the metaverse framing itself.
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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