In a world that feels constantly in crisis mode, premium and luxury consumers are looking for far more than a destination. What matters most today is stability, mental relief and, paradoxically, a renewed desire for simplicity and freedom from complexity, a notion that long seemed outdated in the luxury segment.
Prophet’s 2026 Consumer Generation Study makes one thing clear: the luxury market remains a “rock in the surf”, in other words, a resilient segment in an otherwise volatile environment. While the broader market is stagnating, 39% of premium and luxury consumers plan to increase their spending in 2026. Yet brands hoping to capture this affluent audience must recognize a fundamental shift: the definition of luxury has changed.
A New Definition of Premium Travel
In our recent study, Why Reassurance Matters More Than Status in Today’s Premium and Luxury Market, we explore how brand dependability has become a luxury in its own right during uncertain times. The latest data reinforces that trend and reveals just how profoundly perceptions of premium and luxury continue to evolve.
Today, reassurance extends beyond physical safety. It encompasses emotional well-being, reliable climate conditions, and the right balance of human interaction, offering consumers an alternative to feeling overwhelmed by anonymous technology or AI. This change is reflected in six key findings:
1. Premium and luxury consumers defy market volatility
Despite economic uncertainty, spending intentions remain remarkably resilient. Premium and luxury consumers continue to demonstrate strong willingness to spend, making this one of the most stable customer segments in 2026.
2. Mental wellness is now a core travel motivation
Travel is increasingly viewed as a pathway to emotional balance and recovery. While 56% of consumers seek physical rejuvenation, nearly as many (55%) are looking for inner balance, personal meaning, and mental restoration.
3. “Coolcations” go mainstream
Climate change is reshaping travel behavior in tangible ways. In 2026, 39% of luxury travelers deliberately choose cooler destinations or travel periods to avoid extreme heat. Among Millennials, that figure rises to 44%.
4. Luxury cruises continue to gain momentum
With 36% untapped demand potential, luxury cruises remain a significant growth opportunity, particularly among travelers over 40.
5. The package holiday is making a comeback
Especially among younger consumers, simplicity and predictability are becoming increasingly valuable. As a result, the traditional package holiday is experiencing a revival.
6. Tech & touch becomes the new standard
Affluent travelers readily embrace AI-enabled tools and digital services, yet personal interaction remains a critical source of trust and reassurance. The future belongs to brands that successfully combine technological convenience with meaningful human connection.
At the same time, sustainability remains important, but it is no longer the primary decision-making factor it once was. Since 2020, the share of premium and luxury consumers willing to pay a premium for sustainable travel options has fallen from 51% to 39%. Even more striking is the decline in consumers willing to modify their own travel behavior for sustainability reasons—from 45% to 30%.
From Insight to Action: What This Means for Travel Brands
These findings point to some clear opportunities for travel and hospitality brands. To stay relevant and competitive in 2026, companies should focus on six key priorities:
1. Understand the unique dynamics of premium and luxury consumers
In a challenging economic environment, premium and luxury consumers remain among the most resilient customer groups, with a sustained willingness to spend. Successfully engaging this audience requires a sophisticated understanding of how premium and luxury truly work—from brand storytelling and the luxury codes that signal quality, exclusivity and desirability to the many distinct expressions of luxury across generations and consumer segments.
2. Meet the growing need for mental wellness
Wellness is no longer a spa offering—it is a core demand driver. Companies must develop experiences that help travelers recharge emotionally and mentally, whether through retreats, mindfulness programs or digital detox experiences.
3. Innovate around the “Coolcation” trend
While sustainability may be losing some of its pulling power, climate concerns are influencing traveler choices in new ways. Brands should create and actively market compelling experiences in cooler regions and destinations.
4. Bring the package holiday back—differently
When everyday life feels increasingly demanding, travel should feel effortless. The package holiday needs to be reinvented as a premium convenience product—one that satisfies the growing desire for stress-free experiences and reduced complexity.
5. The luxury cruise market has untapped potential
For operators, this is a call to action to find ever newer and smarter ways to unlock that potential. And for those who are not yet active in this market, it may be a signal to reconsider that decision, possibly with an innovative offering aimed at the under-45 target audience.
6. Build hybrid models: tech & touch
The industry must find a new balance between convenience and trust. AI-powered tools drive efficiency, particularly among younger audiences where adoption rates reach 34% among Gen Z. At the same time, personal service remains highly valued by older travelers. Around half of Baby Boomers place greater importance on human interaction than Gen Z consumers do. Across generations, human connection continues to provide trust, guidance and reassurance.
Final Thoughts
The luxury travel market of 2026 is not defined by extravagance. It is defined by resilience. The brands that win will not be those that offer more complexity or more status signaling. They will be the ones that reduce friction, provide genuine emotional reassurance and help consumers navigate an increasingly uncertain world with confidence.
Catalysts: AI’s Next Challenge Isn’t Adoption, It’s Leadership
Beyond AI experimentation, the organizations pulling ahead won’t simply have the best technology, but the leaders who can navigate uncertainty and align teams across the enterprise.
For the past two years, organizations have been racing to adopt AI. Teams have experimented with pilots, automated workflows, tested use cases, and launched innovation initiatives at unprecedented speed. But in many companies, these initiatives are disconnected and AI adoption has outpaced governance, operating models, and even clear strategic direction.
As part of the seventh edition of Prophet’s Catalysts research, we’re exploring whether AI’s next challenge is no longer adoption, but leadership. Through our qualitative research, several early hypotheses are beginning to emerge that we’ll continue to test through our upcoming quantitative research.
As the initial wave of experimentation matures, a new reality is emerging: AI isn’t just changing how organisations operate; it’s changing the nature of work itself. To make the most of this opportunity, organisations must be structured, aligned, and upskilled enough to harness it.
In last year’s Catalysts research, we explored the importance of building the human infrastructure around AI, emphasizing that transformation could not simply be technical, but needed to be cultural as well. That idea still holds true. But the conversation has evolved. In other words, the challenge is no longer just adapting to AI. It is fundamentally shifting how we organize and structure our work based on a new AI-enabled paradigm.
Organizations are now moving beyond questions of readiness and adaptability toward something more fundamental: how strategy, talent, culture, governance, and operations work together as an interconnected system, and how to redesign work, not just layer AI onto outdated processes.
This demands intentional focus from leadership and points to a broader shift: competitive advantage may increasingly come from an organization’s ability to continuously adapt, rather than simply adopt. We’ll be exploring how organisations can do this across the next four blog posts.
What we’re seeing from the new research:
1. AI Leadership is becoming change leadership
To succeed in the age of AI, leaders can no longer rely on certainty, fixed answers, or static transformation maps. As AI evolves rapidly, organizations need leaders who can guide through ambiguity, align teams around moving targets, and create momentum without having complete clarity.
“You have to take into consideration all the human change management aspects.”
Business Leader, International Food Business
2. Leaders need to set the vision
The most effective leaders are starting from the business need, not the tool, asking how AI accelerates what the organization is already trying to achieve and seizing the opportunity to innovate on the systems and processes that currently exist.
“We had to create a visual of all the agents we had in existence to prevent people from building the same solution several times in different parts of the business.”
AI leader, Global Industrial Conglomerate
3. Leaders need to communicate openly
For employees to be engaged and excited around AI, leaders must build trust around it and communicate openly, about what AI can help the organization do, what it means for how people work and their jobs, and what they themselves are still learning or don’t yet know.
“We’ve had to get everyone over the AI anxiety hump because everyone was talking about AI coming to take their jobs, but what does that really mean and what skillsets and mindsets do we need to develop to keep pace with this change?”
HR Leader, B2B Marketing & Sales
What’s next for business leaders?
1. Get organized around AI, not just excited about it
In last year’s Catalysts research, we emphasized the importance of building workforce readiness and fostering human-centered AI adoption. This year, we’re seeing organizations move beyond awareness and experimentation into a new challenge: organizational coordination.
The companies pulling ahead are not necessarily the ones with the most AI tools; they are the ones creating alignment across strategy, governance, operations, talent, and leadership. The challenge is no longer simply adopting AI; it’s organizing the enterprise around it.
2. Develop leaders who can operate through uncertainty
Our 2025 research highlighted the need for leaders to build trust and create human-centered transformation environments. This year, we’re seeing leadership expectations evolve even further. Organizations increasingly need leaders who can navigate “known unknowns” without pretending to have fixed answers. Leaders that are embedding experimentation, iteration, and learning directly into how work happens, rather than treating transformation as a separate initiative running alongside the business.
3. Normalize experimentation and course correction
Organizations know they need experimentation, but many are still operating with cultures and systems optimized for predictability and risk reduction.
In our last research, we emphasized experimentation as an innovation muscle. This year, it is increasingly becoming an operational requirement. Organizations need to create environments where teams can test, learn, adapt, and share insights quickly, while still operating within clear strategic guardrails. The strongest organizations are not eliminating uncertainty. They are building the institutional stamina to move through it faster.
The imperative leaders are facing is no longer simply adopting AI. It is learning how to lead through a period of continuous change, where strategy, talent, governance, culture, and operations must evolve together. Our early research suggests that competitive advantage may increasingly come from leaders’ ability to adopt, align, and learn at a similar pace to the technological change itself.
This is the first article in our Catalysts 2026 series. Continue reading as we explore how organizations are rethinking strategy, talent, operating models, and culture to create sustained value through AI, and stay tuned for the full report later this year.
Four Conversations About the Future of Growth at Cannes Lions
What everyone was talking about at Cannes Lions this year.
Walking into Cannes Lions this year, I expected every conversation to revolve around AI. In one sense, it did.
Whether I was listening to Tiffany Rolfe and Nick Pringle at R/GA, Carla Hassan at JPMorgan Chase, Patrick O’Keefe at e.l.f. Beauty, Mark Kirkham at PepsiCo, leaders from McLaren Racing, Mars, SharkNinja, or the CMO Accelerator, AI found its way into nearly every session. But by the end of the week, I realized the technology itself wasn’t the most interesting part of the conversation.
What stood out was how consistently leaders from completely different industries were asking the same question: How do brands create growth in a world where AI is changing not only how organizations work, but how consumers discover, evaluate and engage with brands?
That shift felt remarkably consistent with what we’re seeing in our own work at Prophet and our clients. As AI becomes embedded in both enterprise operations and everyday consumer behavior, competitive advantage isn’t just about adopting new technology. It’s about rethinking how brands earn relevance, build trust and create value in an AI-powered world.
Across four days, four themes kept surfacing.
1. Judgment is becoming a competitive advantage.
One of the biggest surprises wasn’t how enthusiastic marketers were about AI. It was how disciplined they were about its limitations. At R/GA, Tiffany Rolfe and Nick Pringle challenged the industry’s fixation on outputs. As AI makes execution faster and more accessible, they argued that judgment, taste and strategic thinking become even more valuable. One line that stayed with me was their challenge to move from “making things” to “making things that make things.”
That same tension surfaced during the CMO Accelerator, where one participant observed that AI allows good marketers to produce mediocre work much faster. The challenge isn’t creating more. It’s maintaining the standards, curiosity and conviction to create work that is genuinely distinctive.
The conversation has clearly evolved. The question is no longer whether AI can generate content. It’s how organizations use AI to make better decisions, uncover better opportunities and create better work.
2. Relevance is replacing reach.
If there was one word I heard repeatedly throughout the week, it was relevance. Mars captured it perfectly: “You cannot buy relevance. You have to earn relevance.” The same idea surfaced in very different ways across the festival. Mark Kirkham, CMO of PepsiCo Beverages, argued that brands don’t create culture; they earn the right to participate in it. McLaren Racing shared how it has expanded Formula 1 beyond race day, creating opportunities for fans to engage through entertainment, fashion and partnerships. Even CeraVe’s activation around the NBA Finals succeeded because it felt native to a cultural moment people already cared about rather than interrupting it.
That feels especially relevant as consumers increasingly discover brands through AI-powered search, creator recommendations and algorithmic discovery. Visibility alone won’t create growth. Brands need to be relevant enough to be surfaced, trusted and ultimately chosen.
3. Creators are becoming strategic growth partners.
One of the biggest stories at Cannes wasn’t simply that creators were literally everywhere. It was that their role had fundamentally changed. Conversations with creators Josh Richards and Johnny Harris, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman of Boardroom, alongside announcements from platforms including YouTube, TikTok and Amazon, reflected a broader shift. Creators are no longer being viewed simply as media channels or campaign extensions. They’re increasingly becoming long-term partners in building communities, trust and brand ecosystems.
That has meaningful implications for CMOs. As the customer journey becomes more distributed, brands are no longer the sole authors of their story. Growth increasingly depends on designing systems where creators, employees, customers and communities actively participate in building the brand alongside the organization itself.
4. AI is accelerating the need for stronger foundations.
Perhaps the most unexpected conversations all week weren’t about technology at all. They were about organizational design. At Jim Stengel’s final CMO Accelerator, discussions focused less on AI tools than on talent, workflows, governance and operating models. One speaker made a point that echoed throughout the week: transformation doesn’t begin with technology. It begins with people, ways of working and how decisions get made.
That observation helped connect many of the conversations I’d heard throughout Cannes. AI isn’t replacing the fundamentals of growth. If anything, it’s reinforcing them. As more content is created by AI, agencies, creators and internal teams, the need for a clear brand strategy becomes even more important. As consumer journeys become more fragmented, understanding what your brand stands for becomes the anchor that keeps every touchpoint aligned. In many ways, AI isn’t creating entirely new challenges. It’s exposing the importance of solving long-standing ones.
Walking away from Cannes, I expected my biggest takeaway to be about AI. Instead, I left thinking about this new era of growth and creativity.
The conversations that stayed with me weren’t really about prompts, copilots or models. They were about judgment, relevance, creators, trust, and organizational transformation. Different industries, different speakers and different examples all pointed toward the same conclusion: AI is raising the bar for what great marketing and creativity looks like.
For Prophet, that reinforces something we’ve been exploring through our work with clients around uncommon growth. The opportunity isn’t simply to use AI to do today’s work more efficiently. It’s to rethink how brands create value for a consumer whose expectations, behaviors and decision-making are changing just as quickly as the technology itself.
That, more than any product announcement or keynote, felt like the defining conversation at Cannes Lions 2026.
How to grow in an ever-changing world? The Uncommon Growth Playbook for a New Era
There’s never been more risk to, or opportunity for growth than there is today. Today’s business leaders face a profound intersection of disruptive cultural, technological, political, and economic forces that can upend longstanding business models overnight. The traditional approach to growth and innovation that worked over the past 20 years has been upended as disruption is not just coming from new products, but new business models and cultural movements traveling at warp speed, entirely changing the rules of the game.
Our research confirms that this is not only possible amid this disruption but is already being proven. In our “Uncommon Growth in Uncommon Times” study, Prophet identified 179 S&P 500 companies that have delivered what we call Uncommon Growth. We characterize this as exceptional growth (averaging 2x their industry peers) that is sustainable (maintained over five or more years), and durable (persisting through disruption). These companies span industries, sizes, and stages. They aren’t outliers by luck. They’ve made deliberate choices that set them apart.
Through work with organizations around the world, we’ve defined five plays that enable leaders to attain Uncommon Growth. These five plays represent critical shifts in how leaders gather intelligence, frame their market, design their businesses, target customers, and build internal momentum. Together, they distinguish today’s uncommon growth leaders:
Shifting from a product and service only focus to orchestrated platforms and AI native offerings that create and capture value across every point of engagement
This is not a linear formula. It’s a new and essential toolkit that leaders can tailor to their business model, organizational maturity, and industry, and each is designed to drive speed to understanding and impact, using both analysis and embedded AI.
Throughout this playbook, you’ll find examples, measurable impact and actions to move from ambition to outcome. Uncommon growth is not a theory. It’s the disciplined execution of the right moves, at the right moment, for your unique organization.
Always-On Human Insights From Discrete Research to Agentic Intelligence
Today’s customers aren’t just changing faster—they’re living through a world that changes around them every day. New technologies, shifting expectations, cultural moments, and economic pressures continually reshape how people think, choose, and buy. For growth leaders, the challenge isn’t a lack of data. It’s developing a deep enough understanding of people to keep pace.
The opportunity for growth leaders is unprecedented—but realizing it requires rethinking how organizations build empathy with customers and translate that understanding into action.
The companies that win won’t simply collect more data. They’ll have greater organizational empathy—the ability for every product manager, marketer, strategist, and executive to more deeply understand the people they serve and create experiences that feel genuinely relevant.
To drive uncommon growth, leaders must build empathy with their customers and treat customer intelligence as a live utility — not a periodic input. This requires a fundamental shift from discrete research to market sensing and customer intelligence, executed through three core actions:
1. Go deeper to understand people more completely.
Organizations have access to richer sources of customer understanding than ever before—from first-party data to qualitative research and the broader economic, cultural, and social forces shaping people’s decisions. AI makes it possible to connect these signals into a more complete picture of customers, helping businesses move beyond knowing what people do to better understand why they do it—and anticipate what they may do next.
2. Expand insights across more people.
AI can extend trusted research methods across vastly larger populations and datasets, allowing organizations to validate ideas, uncover emerging trends, and identify opportunities with greater speed and confidence—without sacrificing rigor.
3. Put customer understanding into everyday decisions.
Insights create value only when they’re used. Instead of sitting in reports or dashboards, customer intelligence should be continuously available to the people making strategic, product, marketing, and commercial decisions. AI-powered insight agents can deliver relevant customer context at the moment decisions are made, enabling teams to act faster, with greater confidence and a stronger connection to customer needs.
Uber’s AI platform has 5K models in production, serving 10 million real-time predictions per second at peak. Uber leverages “always-on” insights and AI agents to optimize customer experience and service. The company’s first quarter of 2026 saw revenue grow by 14% to $13.2 billion with trips growing 20% year-over-year, suggesting that when insights are always-on and embedded in the product, the distance between a customer need and a business response drops to near zero.
The organizations that close the gap between insights collection and access—evolving their organizations to deploy AI as a powerful enabler of human insights —will be the ones that define the next era of consumer intelligence. Move beyond just asking what your consumers need — and start asking why they did it, what they might do next, and what you should do about it right now.
Future-Back InnovationStrategy From Category Growth to Future Markets
The biggest future growth opportunities are unlikely to sit squarely within your current category; they’re forming at the edges of it, shaped by forces most companies haven’t yet acted on. Taking share from competitors, extending product lines, entering adjacent geographies: these moves still matter. But they are increasingly insufficient to deliver uncommon growth.
The reason is structural.
CEOs spend approximately 36% of their time in reactive “firefighting” mode while devoting only 10% to 15% to long-term planning. This misalignment is exacerbated by market pressures, as 78% of financial executives admit they would reduce discretionary spending on R&D or maintenance to meet quarterly earnings targets, even if they knew it would destroy long-term value.
Consequently, the window for organizational survival is shrinking; the average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has dropped from 33 years in the 1960s to just 15 years today. The gap between short-term execution and long-term positioning is widening — and the companies pulling ahead are closing it deliberately.
The shift is from today’s category growth to future markets and entirely new frames of reference for the category you operate in: The imperative for future-forward growth leaders is to identify where disruption and emerging customer needs are opening entirely new markets and opportunities, and to capitalize on them with conviction. There are three critical components to understanding future markets and frames of reference that can also become an ongoing discipline within the organization:
1. Understand the drivers of change to identify future areas of demand.
Mapping the social, technological, economic, environmental, regulatory, and political forces reshaping your industry is critical, both to build an understanding of how it affects your category today and to explore emerging categories. Working deeply with subject matter experts enables growth leaders to understand the trends that define where demand is heading, not just where it sits today.
2. Define future markets and identify challenges.
An initial analysis into forces at play and demand opportunities enables growth leaders to frame future markets to dive into, mapping the competitive dynamics and customer needs.
3. Define your target destination.
Framing attractive potential markets for growth based on your business realities enables leaders to align on a target destination for sustainable business growth. With a clear picture of the business you need to become, organizations can then work backward — progressing potential business growth models through stage gates of desirability, viability, and feasibility.
Future-back innovation strategies and thinking create real friction with boards and teams focused on near-term results. But the value isn’t in the scenarios themselves — it’s in the concrete strategic bets they open to chart a sustainable and robust path to growth.
In fiscal 2018, gaming represented roughly 57% of NVIDIA’s revenue, with data centers accounting for under 20%.i NVIDIA bet early that its GPU architecture would power large-scale AI training — and committed to that destination years before the market reached critical mass. By fiscal 2026, data center revenue hit $193.7 billion — 90% of total revenue — and full-year revenue reached $215.9 billion. That transformation was the result of reading the forces of change early and building toward a future most competitors hadn’t yet recognized.
The question is not whether your category will be disrupted. It’s whether you’ll define what comes next — or arrive late to a future someone else built.
New Business Model Innovation From Products and Services to Platforms
Here’s a question most growth strategies don’t ask: what happens after the sale? For the majority of businesses, the answer is surprisingly little. The product ships, the service is delivered, and the customer relationship goes quiet until the next transaction. That silence is one of the largest untapped growth assets in business today — and the companies compounding value fastest have figured out how to fill it.
The pattern is consistent across industries: the highest-value businesses aren’t winning primarily on what they sell.
They’re winning on the depth of the relationship they maintain while customers are actively using what they’ve bought. That relationship generates proprietary data, deepens customer engagement, and creates switching costs that a lower-priced competitor simply can’t replicate. The shift is from products and services to platforms — business models that let you observe, interact with, and add value for customers during the time between one purchase and the next.
You don’t need to be a technology company. You need to create the conditions under which your business stays connected to customers during what we call the User Journey. Execution follows a four-stage progression:
1. Start with in-use visibility.
Build the ability to see what customers are actually doing with your product after the sale, which is the foundational data layer most traditional models completely lack.
2. Create interactive value.
Develop touchpoints, tools, or services that add real value during active use, deepening the customer relationship and generating behavioral signals you can learn from.
3. Personalize and grow.
Use what the platform reveals to tailor and expand the value delivered to each customer over time, which will drive increasing satisfaction and share of wallet.
4. Attract through proof.
Let the richness of the platform experience and data-validated results become a powerful acquisition tool to draw new customers through demonstrated value, not just marketing.
The biggest friction will be organizational: most businesses are structured around product sales cycles, not ongoing engagement. A platform model requires investment in data infrastructure and continuous value delivery before the financial return is fully visible.
Platform Business Model in Action: The New York Times
The New York Times evolved from a print newspaper into NYT, a multi-product digital platform — bundling news, cooking, games, audio, and sports into a single subscription. Digital-only subscription revenues grew by approximately 14% to $1.43 billion, with bundle and multi-product subscribers now representing approximately 51% of the digital base. The company didn’t grow by writing more articles — it grew by redesigning its relationship with readers across more of their daily lives.
The critical question isn’t “What new product can we launch?” It’s “How do we stay valuable to the customers we already have — and make that value visible to everyone we haven’t yet reached?”
Customer Ecosystem Management From Individual Customers to Coalitions
Most growth strategies focus on two things: acquiring more customers and keeping the ones you have. Both matter enormously. But they share a blind spot that limits how much value your business can create and capture.
The blind spot: your customers don’t exist in isolation.
Every customer is surrounded by an ecosystem of influencers, from providers to creators, advisors, and communities, who shape their decisions before, during, and after the purchase. The companies building the strongest competitive positions today aren’t just serving customers. They’re connecting the parties around them into coalitions where everyone exchanges value, and where the business sits at the center.
This is the shift from customers to customer coalitions: moving beyond a one-way value exchange between company and buyer and instead facilitating a “better together” network where participants make each other more valuable. The result: lower acquisition costs, higher lifetime value, and stickiness that a marginally better product from a competitor can’t easily break.
Executing this shift requires focusing on three areas:
1. Precision archetype scaling.
Growth in a coalition isn’t about scale for scale’s sake — it’s about the right mix of participant types: users, providers, creators, sponsors, and influencers. Identify which personas fill gaps in the ecosystem and create a self-sustaining growth loop. Are the right providers balanced to customer demand in a given market?
2. Multi-dimensional value exchange.
Look beyond the direct value your company delivers and design for the lateral value members provide to one another. When you engage the same person in multiple ways — a user who also reviews, recommends, and advocates — you drive significantly higher spend and create differentiation competitors can’t replicate.
3. Tiered ecosystem loyalty.
Move from transactional discounts to recognition systems that reward specific behaviors — quality, consistency, responsiveness — rather than just volume. This lets you capture premium needs at higher margins while remaining accessible at the entry level.
The friction here is real. Investing in peripheral ecosystem participants can feel indirect when teams are measured on near-term revenue. But the payoff is a self-reinforcing system that compounds over time.
Airbnb’s competitive advantage isn’t inventory — it’s the coalition. Guests rely on reviews, host interactions, and experience recommendations when deciding where to stay. Approximately 41% of U.S. hosts qualify as Superhosts, earning at least 29% more than standard hosts — a tiered recognition system that incentivizes quality, raises satisfaction, and drives the reviews that attract more guests. Beyond hosts, Airbnb builds a customer coalition by engaging creators and local communities to share authentic experiences, creating a network of advocates who drive trust and influence through their own voices and networks. That self-reinforcing loop helped Airbnb reach $12.2 billion in FY2025 revenue with 533 million nights and experiences booked — built not on a better product alone, but on a coalition that compounds value for every participant.
The question isn’t just “How do we serve our customers better?” It’s “Who are the parties around our customers that make the experience better — and how do we bring them together?”
Organizational Culture as Catalyst From Stated Values to Purpose-Built Culture
Every organization has written its values on a slide or poster. Very few have a culture that accelerates growth. The gap between what a company says it believes and how people inside it behave is where most growth strategies quietly die.
The evidence is consistent: research shows that approximately 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives.
The failure is rarely due to a flawed strategy or insufficient funding. Instead, it is most often rooted in organizational and cultural resistance — the antibodies within an organization that reject the very changes leaders are trying to implement. You can invest in the sharpest strategy and the most advanced tools, but if the culture isn’t built to absorb and act on them, the organization will default to what it already knows.
The shift is from stated values to purpose-built culture: a culture deliberately designed to champion bold bets, move with speed, and sustain momentum long after the initial energy of a new initiative fades. This isn’t about writing better values statements. It’s about rewiring how the organization operates.
Organizational Ambition
Defining a compelling ambition for the organization aligning purpose, strategy and culture — enabled by the right behaviors
Leadership Enablement
Clarifying what is expected of leaders, providing them with the skills and tools to demonstrate change and build trust with their teams
Employee Ignition
Sparking employee interest, passion, and accountability by showing them what great looks like
Executional Excellence
Unlocking people and work through systemic change in service of delivery against strategic objectives
Three moves make this real:
1. Decentralize growth ownership.
Uncommon growth cannot be a top-down mandate. Empower people at every level to identify and act on opportunities — and to challenge legacy processes that slow the organization down. When growth ownership is distributed, the company becomes a network of sensors rather than a hierarchy waiting for direction.
2. Operationalize experimentation.
Move beyond “permission to fail” toward active incentives to experiment. Reward the process of discovery, not just the outcome. If your performance reviews only recognize hitting quarterly targets on legacy products, the culture will never champion the new — no matter what the values slide says.
3. Build momentum loops.
Shift from annual planning to rolling cycles that redirect resources toward what’s working in real time. Leaders must move from managing performance to evangelizing the behaviors that produced it.
The tension is real: protecting the core business while funding the future creates friction. Culture must provide the permission to reconsider your own business when the evidence points forward — and the resilience to sustain speed without burning people out.
Organizational Culture as Competitive Advantage in Action: e.l.f. Beauty
e.l.f. marked its 29th consecutive quarter of net sales growth and market share gains, with net sales of $1.63 billion for fiscal year 2026, an increase of 25%. The company’s willingness to experiment with emerging platforms — it was one of the first beauty brands on TikTok and has since expanded to Roblox and Twitch — reflects a cultural DNA that rewards speed and experimentation over perfection. That consistency isn’t a single product hit — it’s a culture that moves at what e.l.f. calls “e.l.f. speed,” where purpose and performance reinforce each other daily.
You cannot program growth into a spreadsheet. You need a human-centered transformation model and a culture supportive of change, which can only come about through nurturing people — and cultivating the systems, skills, incentives, and norms that shape how they show up every day.
The journey to creating Uncommon Growth starts today.
Every growth move describes a shift that successful Uncommon Growth companies have already made — and that their competitors, in most cases, have not. The distance between those two groups is widening. Not because companies lack talent or capital, but because they’re still running plays designed for a world that no longer exists. None of these plays require you to rebuild your company from scratch, but each one requires you to challenge an assumption your organization has been operating on for years. The companies achieving uncommon growth aren’t waiting for perfect conditions. They’re building the capability to grow without them.
The playbook is here.The question is what you do next.
Prophet’s Uncommon Growth Playbook and practice areas are led by a multidisciplinary team of experienced growth leaders across strategy, insights, innovation, experience, and AI solutions—all with an eye on speed to impact.
Contact us to learn more.
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Authors
Mike Leiser Chief Transformation Officer, Senior Partner
Jay Milliken Global Lead of Growth Strategy, Senior Partner
How clear value stories can position health tech companies to earn greater trust and premium valuation.
Healthcare technology companies face a paradox: the market has never been more bullish on the sector — recent research showed that AI-enabled companies now capture 55% of all health tech funding and command a 19% premium on deal size — yet public health tech companies still trade at a meaningful discount to cloud peers, despite roughly 2x the revenue growth and free cash flow margin.
Strong businesses still lose value when the story is unclear: The gap isn’t just a business problem; it’s a narrative problem. Most health-tech companies have a brand platform in one deck, a product story in another, an investor narrative from the CFO’s team, and a sales pitch from field marketing. Individually, each is internally logical, but collectively incoherent and hard for teams to articulate. Too often, companies speak in higher-order benefits without ever making clear what they actually do, where they play, or why they should win an organization’s business.
We recently sat in a room where a health-tech company pitched its full suite of services. After they finished, our client simply asked at the vendor: “So what is it that you actually do?”
A Story of Value connects the story across audiences: What closes this gap for clients is a Story of Value: a coherent narrative spine that captures who the company is, the tension it resolves, how it creates value, and why that story justifies premium valuation. When the narrative is properly modulated for priority audience groups, it retains its core value while ensuring resonance for each audience.
Five Moves That Make a Value Story Credible
Health-tech companies that get this right will:
Define a clear frame of reference first. Before reaching for elevated positioning, companies need to answer a basic question: what do they actually do? Name the competitive set, the outcomes, and where they play. In our work with a major healthcare financial services company, the challenge was moving beyond its best-known role in facilitating payments transactions toward a broader frame: bridging gaps in the healthcare financial system, improving the financial experience of healthcare, and aligning the interests of payers, providers, and members. That shift created a stronger platform for growth.
Name where AI creates defensible economic value. Being AI-enabled may now be table stakes; it cannot be the whole story. The real question is where AI creates advantage that compounds over time and is difficult to copy. In our work with a major virtual care platform, we saw how quickly AI language can flatten into sameness: personalization, insights, integration. What created credibility was not broader AI rhetoric, but specificity — which data, improving which workflow, producing which measurable result.
Ensure the human touch is inextricably linked to AI. In healthcare, meticulous care around data is paramount, especially when it comes to AI use. In helping shape the story for that same virtual care platform, one important choice was to frame AI as an enabler of people, not a replacement for them, with clinician oversight built into the moments that matter most. The important move was not just having that governance mindset internally but making visible to the market where automation stops and expert judgment begins.
Thread a single narrative across every audience. Investors, buyers, clinicians, and patients should all recognize themselves in the same core story, with the emphasis adjusted for each audience. We saw this in our previously mentioned work for a healthcare financial services company: by anchoring the company in bridging gaps across the healthcare financial system, the story could resonate across payers, providers, and members without splintering into disconnected messages. One framework, many expressions.
Build a system of proof — and earn your claims over time. Sophisticated healthcare buyers are not rewarding ambition alone; they are asking for evidence. Large employers and health systems want proof before integrating new tools and systems, especially when AI claims are involved. In our work with a patient financial engagement platform, the strongest story was not AI for AI’s sake, but AI tied to operating outcomes: higher collections, lower cost-to-collect, faster cash flow, and fewer billing calls through intelligent support. That kind of results-backed proof makes innovation more credible because it connects technology directly to measurable value.
In the age of AI, the margin for narrative incoherence is zero. The companies that answer the market’s implicit question, “why this company?”, with one credible, evidence-grounded Story of Value will earn the multiples, the deals, and the trust, outpacing competitors without a clear articulation of what they do and why it matters.
Healthcare leaders are operating in an environment where innovation alone is not enough. To earn trust — and the premium that comes with it — companies need a narrative that is as disciplined as their strategy: clear in its frame of reference, specific in how value is created and grounded in evidence. The strongest stories do more than describe a business; they help the market understand why they should care.
Interested in pressure-testing your current story? Let’s discuss how a Story of Value can strengthen your organization’s positioning, market confidence and growth.
In Health Tech, AI Doesn’t Win Deals – Outcomes Do
How clear value stories can position health tech companies to earn greater trust and premium valuation.
Every healthcare service and technology company now claims to be AI-powered. What once signaled innovation now reads as category shorthand. According to a recent McKinsey survey, 85 percent of healthcare leaders are now exploring or have adopted generative AI capabilities—making “AI-powered” closer to table stakes than a point of distinction. Meanwhile, buyer skepticism is rising in parallel: a national survey from Ohio State University and SSRS found that public openness to AI in care dropped from 52 percent to 42 percent in just two years. The presence of AI alone no longer earns attention. Buyers want to know what it actually does, where it matters, and why they should believe it will work in the environments in which they operate.
The market is saturated with undifferentiated AI claims. That shift has created a new messaging challenge. In many health-tech companies, AI is described at one of two unhelpful extremes: either as a broad aspiration that could apply to almost anyone, or as a technical capability that only product teams can decode. The result is a value gap. Companies may be making real investments in data, models, and intelligent workflows, but their market story still fails to answer the most important buyer question: why should this matter to me?
The Three Places Companies Tend to Tell Their AI Story
From our work across healthcare, data and technology businesses, we see a consistent pattern. AI messaging tends to land in three places, but only one of them creates real differentiation.
First, there is AI in the product: copilots, smart features, clinical suggestions, intelligent routing. These capabilities are increasingly expected, but rarely distinctive. Nearly every competitor either has them or claims to. Framed this way, AI becomes a feature label, not a market advantage.
Second, there is AI in the business: internal efficiency, lower cost-to-serve, faster processing, better staffing. This can be an important part of the investor story. But it is usually the wrong lead message for customers. Buyers care about whether those gains translate into better service, better economics, or better outcomes for them.
Third, there is AI as a driver of customer value. This is where differentiation begins. The message shifts from what the technology is to what it changes: which workflow improves, which decision gets smarter, which friction point is removed. In this mode, AI is not the headline. The headline is the benefit it generates.
The hardest claims to copy are not capability claims. They are claims rooted in proprietary data, embedded workflows, measurable results, and a trust model that holds up in practice.
A Simple Test for Whether Your Message is Working
We saw this clearly in a recent messaging engagement with a major virtual care platform. Like many companies in the category, it faced a familiar risk: its AI language sounded too broad to be credible and too similar to what others were already saying. Terms such as personalization, insights and integration were directionally right, but too generic to carry the story. What sharpened the narrative was greater specificity — which data made the system smarter, which moments in the care journey improved, how the technology helped care teams act sooner and engage the right people. Just as important, the company needed to show where clinician oversight remained essential and where governance was built into the system. In healthcare, trust is not supporting detail. It is part of the value proposition.
This points to a simple pressure test: if you remove the phrase “AI” from your message and it no longer says anything meaningful, you are describing the technology, not the advantage. If the story remains compelling without the term — because it communicates workflow impact, outcomes, proof, and trust — then the message is doing real strategic work.
In Healthcare, Credibility is the Differentiator
The companies standing out today follow the same discipline. They name the user and the workflow. They quantify the effect. They make clear why their data or delivery model gives them an edge. And they treat governance and responsible use as visible parts of the story, not footnotes for legal review. In healthcare, where the standard for credibility is structurally higher, vague AI rhetoric does more than blur differentiation. It can actively weaken trust.
In health tech, AI may be necessary, but it is no longer enough. The companies that stand out will not be the ones that talk about intelligence most loudly. They will be the ones who explain most clearly how intelligence creates better care experiences, stronger engagement, greater efficiency, and more credible outcomes.
If your organization is investing in AI but struggling to turn that into a story customers trust, it may be time to pressure-test the narrative. We work with healthcare services and technology companies to clarify where AI creates real value, how that value should be
AI Is Transforming Marketing in Healthcare–Is Your Team Ready?
How leading healthcare and technology brands are piloting AI to transform their marketing—and what it takes to do it right.
AI isn’t just another tool in the marketer’s toolkit. It’s fundamentally changing how brands understand audiences, create content, and drive growth. Across our recent working sessions with healthcare and health-tech organizations, one truth surfaced consistently: the brands that win with AI won’t be the ones that move fastest, but the ones that move most thoughtfully.
Today, most marketing leaders are already experimenting. Generative AI is in active use across content, analytics, and enablement, and investment is accelerating as CMOs see early ROI. But speed without strategy creates noise, not growth—especially in healthcare, where trust, accuracy, and consistency matter as much as efficiency.
The real shift isn’t just technological. It’s organizational. Marketers are evolving from storytellers to systems architects, responsible for building infrastructures that balance real-time responsiveness with long-term brand equity. AI can accelerate that evolution—but only if human judgment remains firmly in the loop.
The Shared Reality: What Healthcare Marketers Are Wrestling With
We hosted work sessions with four healthcare organizations’ marketing teams. Despite playing different roles in the healthcare ecosystem across organizations, a common set of tensions is emerging as AI moves from experimentation to scale.
Human insight versus machine output.
AI can generate content, insights, and recommendations at a speed no team can match. But machines optimize for patterns, not meaning. Ensuring that AI-generated outputs resonate emotionally, reflect lived patient experiences, and align with brand purpose remains a core challenge.
Brand consistency at speed.
As content volume explodes across channels, teams are struggling to maintain a consistent voice, tone, and visual identity—particularly in decentralized environments. The risk isn’t just inefficiency; it’s brand dilution that erodes trust over time.
Data security and privacy.
Healthcare marketers sit on highly sensitive data. Feeding proprietary or patient-related information into public models without guardrails introduces unacceptable risk. Governance, enterprise-grade tools, and thoughtful data design are prerequisites—not downstream fixes.
Internal resistance and uncertainty.
Fear is real: concerns about job displacement, confusion about where to start, and fatigue from too many tools slow adoption. Successful AI transformation depends as much on change management as it does on technology.
Why These Challenges Matter More Than Ever
Digging deeper, these tensions reveal structural issues that AI is exposing—and can help solve if addressed deliberately.
Being data-rich but insight-poor.
Many marketing teams have access to enormous volumes of data but lack intuitive ways to query, connect, and act on it. AI creates the possibility of natural-language interfaces and real-time insight generation—but only if data is clean, connected, and governed.
Scaling content without diluting credibility.
Healthcare brands are under pressure to publish more, faster, across more channels. The opportunity is scale; the risk is losing clinical rigor, thought leadership, or emotional authenticity. AI raises the floor—but only if brand standards are embedded into workflows.
Decentralization versus coherence.
Large systems often operate across hundreds—or thousands—of digital properties and contributors. AI can be a force for standardization, reuse, and quality control, but without shared frameworks, it simply accelerates fragmentation.
Knowing where to start.
Nearly every organization asks the same question: Which use cases actually matter? Leaders are increasingly prioritizing opportunities based on desirability, viability, and feasibility—then piloting quickly with small, focused teams before scaling.
The most forward-looking teams aren’t asking how AI can replace work. They’re asking how it can elevate it.
AI is not replacing the marketer. It’s redefining what great marketing looks like.
Think of AI as a multiplier. Strong strategy becomes faster. Strong creative becomes more personal. Weak foundations simply fail faster. The healthcare brands that invest now—in the right use cases, the right guardrails, and the right human–AI collaboration models—will be the ones setting the standard over the next three years.
The question isn’t whether AI belongs in your marketing strategy.
It’s whether your marketing strategy is ready for AI.
Ready to explore what human-centered AI can do for your marketing team? Connect with us to discuss a kickstart workshop to help your team identify the pilots that will be most valuable to helping you reach your brand and business goals.
The Retail Store as a Platform: Designing for Commerce, Curation, Connection, and Culture
The most forward-thinking retailers are engineering immersive, multi-faceted platforms that curate commerce, foster human connection, and cultivate culture.
For decades, the narrative surrounding physical retail has been one of disruption and decline, a story pitting brick-and-mortar against the digital juggernaut of e-commerce. But this binary view is obsolete.
The future of retail isn’t about the store versus the website; it’s about the store acting like a website—or more precisely, like a platform.
The most forward-thinking retailers are no longer just designing places to transact; they are engineering immersive, multi-faceted platforms that curate commerce, foster human connection, and cultivate culture.
Why a Platform?
To understand this shift, we must first dissect what a platform business truly is. Unlike traditional linear businesses that create value in a straight line (make a product, sell it to a customer), platform businesses create value by facilitating interactions and transactions between distinct, interdependent groups. Think of Uber (connecting drivers and riders), Airbnb (connecting hosts and guests), or the Apple App Store (connecting developers and users).
Their core asset is not inventory, but the ecosystem and the data that flows through it.
They thrive on network effects: the more participants on one side, the more valuable the platform becomes to the other.
So, how does a physical retail store transform into this kind of dynamic platform?
It ceases to be a mere point-of-sale and becomes a curated, multi-faceted ecosystem where the retailer acts as the orchestrator, not just the owner.
Currently, only a handful of retailers operate stores with this mindset; some fashion brand houses and others like South Korea’s Gentle Monster, Nike’s House of Innovation, and Starbucks Reserve Roastery locations come close. So, how can other retailers turn physical stores into dynamic platforms?
Gentle Monster, Shanghai flagship; art and technology meet fashion and beauty (Source: Gentle Monster) Gentle Monster, Shanghai flagship; art and technology meet fashion and beauty (Source: Gentle Monster)
A full customization wing lives in The Arena, delivering on Nike’s pioneering DIY spirit. (Source: Nike)The latest selection is continually rotated throughout the store. (Source: Nike)With Shop The Look, customers can scan the code at the foot of a mannequin and shop the entire outfit, which can then be purchased immediately through Instant Checkout. (Source: Nike)The Nike Speed Shop uses local data to stock its shelves, and re-stock them based on what the community wants. (Source: Nike)
Starbucks Reserve, Tokyo Roastery (Source: Starbucks)
The Store as a Platform for Curated Commerce
In a traditional model, commerce is straightforward: the retailer stocks what it predicts will sell. The platform store, however, reimagines the floor as a dynamic marketplace.
This means inviting third-party brands, both digital natives and local artisans, to “plug in” to the physical space. These brands become the “producers” on the platform.
For example, a Target or a Nordstrom isn’t just selling its own inventory; it’s hosting a rotating cast of pop-ups and exclusive collaborations. The physical store can become a living, breathing showroom for DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) or new-to-market brands seeking tangible customer touchpoints, and for established brands to test new concepts, as well as the in-store media promoting store-brands and those of the partners or suppliers.
Target partnered with Museum of Ice Cream to launch a pop-up shop in NYC (Source: Yuliya Kim for Adweek)
Over the years, Target has launched dozens of shop-in-shop partnerships with brands and designers to expand its relevance, driving traffic and revenue in important categories.
The retailer’s role shifts from dictator of assortment to curator of experience. They provide the stage—the prime real estate, the logistics, the foot traffic—and take a fee or revenue share from sales.
This model can de-risk inventory, ensure a constantly refreshed and novel assortment, and turn the store into a destination for discovery, not just routine replenishment.
The commerce becomes a value-added service within a larger experience.
And this new curated commerce is supported by both digital tools allowing more seamless online-offline integration.
Collaborations Context:
The store becomes a vessel of collaboration with other culturally relevant brands or personalities, but in the context of the store’s brand experience. The immersive aspect blurs the line between the partner’s equities and the store’s brand, creating an exciting “equity flow” between the parties that can be felt by the customer, shaping brand memories that drive future visits.
Seasonal Sensations:
Shifts in visual merchandising are not just about decorating for the season but being relevant to the consumer mindset regarding everything else going on in their lives. The “platform” shifts its language, its visual effects, and particularly its in-store media content, messaging, creative, and promotions to align with consumer attention.
The Store as a Platform for Human Connection
This is where the physical platform truly outshines its digital counterparts. E-commerce can be transactional and solitary.
The store-as-platform is designed for social and educational interaction, creating a powerful network effect between customers, staff, and brands.
The “users” on this side of the platform are the customers seeking connection and knowledge.
The “providers” are the store’s staff, brand ambassadors, and even fellow shoppers.
Staff as APIs:
In a platform store, associates are not just cashiers or stockers; they are “Application Programming Interfaces” (APIs)—human endpoints of data and expertise. Armed with AI-enabled tablets that access real-time inventory, customer purchase history, and product information, they can offer hyper-personalized service. They are stylists, tech gurus, and guides who facilitate a deeper relationship between the customer and the brand ecosystem.
The “platform” also leverages digital tools to supplement the store staff, such as “endless aisles” providing vastly expanded assortments with minimal inventory carry, and visualization tools (magic mirrors and mobile-enabled AR applications) to streamline trial supported by the personal guidance of staff.
Nordstrom store associate with tablet (Source: Nordstrom)
The next generation of “clienteling” will be AI-enabled.
Community as Content:
The store itself becomes a venue for events—workshops, maker classes, fitness sessions, or panels. A REI store hosting outdoor survival classes or an Apple store holding Today at Apple creative sessions aren’t just selling products; they are selling proficiency, passion, and community.
These events create recurring reasons to visit, transforming the store from a shop into a clubhouse. The connections formed here—between customer and expert, and between customer and customer—create immense loyalty and a defensible moat that Amazon cannot easily replicate.
REI indoor photo of class or activity (Source: REI)
Building community programming around shared interest drives trips and loyalty.
The Store is the Clubhouse:
As loyalty programsevolve to be more about access to experiences and not just collecting points, the store environment can play a key role in evoking a sense of belonging.
Location-based programming as described above is only the start, as technology unlocks better forms of recognition (opt-in facial recognition and geo-location using signals from mobile devices–or even using simple card swipes or RFID readers), more personalized attention can be brought to loyalty program participants, rewarding frequent visits with in-the-moment promotions, access to preferred store hours, and even the provision of food and beverage amenities…
Not by Bread Alone:
As noted above, in creating a platform orientation to the store, the execution should at a minimum deliver a “more reasons to go and more things to do when you are there” experience. Food and beverage offerings provide that always-appreciated and often-desired complement to a shopping trip.
Aligning the offer and assortment with the brand’s personality (think Ralph’s, the Ralph Lauren café attached to many of its stores globally), and should be tuned to be feasibly operated.
Ralph’s Coffee café at Shaw Centre, Singapore; Ralph Lauren setting up coffee shops adjacent to its stores. (Source: Grazia)
The Store as a Platform for Cultural Cultivation
The highest function of the retail platform is to move beyond utility and into identity. It becomes a stage for cultivating and broadcasting a specific culture. Platforms like Instagram or TikTok don’t just host content; they shape trends, language, and aesthetics.
Similarly, a retail store can act as a cultural touchpoint. It’s a three-dimensional manifestation of a brand’s worldview.
A Glossier store isn’t just a place to buy makeup; it’s an Instagram-ready shrine to millennial-pink aesthetics and community-driven beauty. A Patagonia store isn’t just for outdoor gear; it’s a hub for environmental activism, complete with repair workshops and advocacy materials.
In this model, the transaction is almost a byproduct of cultural participation.
Consumers, especially younger generations, don’t just buy products; they buy into beliefs. The retail platform allows them to physically immerse themselves in those beliefs.
The store curates not just products, but a vibe, a value system, and a tribe. This cultural capital is the most powerful form of branding, creating evangelists who wear their purchases as badges of affiliation.
Glossier Philadelphia (Source: Glossier) Glossier District of Columbia (Source: Glossier) Glossier store with customers taking Instagram photos (Source: BoF)
Being in the cultural conversation drives targeted relevance.
The Store as a Media Platform
In today’s retail environment, the store itself is being reimagined as a dynamic media channel, where digital screens transform passive aisles into immersive content experiences. Gone are the days of simple promotional loops; these networks now deliver curated, high-quality content ranging from brand storytelling and recipe tutorials to lifestyle documentaries and live social media feeds.
This content serves a dual purpose: it captivates customers, increasing dwell time and enhancing brand perception, while simultaneously functioning as a highly targeted, daypart-driven advertising platform.
Brands can purchase screen time much like a digital out-of-home network, delivering contextually relevant messages at the precise moment of purchase consideration, effectively turning the physical store into a broadcast studio for targeted, shopper-centric media.
This evolution into a media platform allows retailers to monetize their physical footprint and customer attention in new ways, generating high-margin revenue streams beyond product sales.
The data captured—such as dwell times, engagement metrics, and correlation with sales data—creates a powerful feedback loop, enabling both retailers and brands to refine messaging in real-time for maximum impact.
Ultimately, the store-as-media-platform model elevates the shopping journey from a mere transaction to an engaging, informative, and entertaining experience.
It represents a profound convergence of physical and digital worlds, where the environment not only sells products but also tells stories, builds community, and operates as a sophisticated, measurable media entity in its own right.
Store endcaps fitted with screens (Source: AdAge)
POS media can drive disproportionate selection opportunities for brands and a meaningful revenue stream for the retailer.
Designing the Platform: Data as the Foundation
Underpinning all four of these dimensions—Commerce, Curation, Connection, and Culture—is data. A platform is useless without a feedback loop. In-store sensors, Wi-Fi analytics, mobile app interactions, and transaction data provide a rich, nuanced understanding of how people move, dwell, and interact within the physical space.
This data informs everything: which pop-up brands drive the most footfall, which workshops lead to the highest basket size, which product placements create the most social media buzz, and even how loyalty can be manifested in the store.
This allows retailers to iterate and optimize the “user experience” of their physical platform with the same agility (but perhaps not the same speed) as a digital product team.
This closed-loop system ensures the store remains relevant, responsive, resilient…and productive.
Hema Market uses data to track freshness and food safety information, ensure in-stocks on popular items and manage 30-minute delivery windows for in-store purchases. (Source: Freshippo)
Hema Market leverages its fully integrated online-to-offline data ecosystem to deliver a seamless, hyper-personalized customer experience. It unifies digital and physical shopping, enabling real-time analysis of individual preferences, purchase history, and even dwell time.
This data powers dynamic in-store digital signage and an AI-driven replenishment system, ensuring popular SKUs are never out of stock. The result is a frictionless journey where customers receive relevant offers, enjoy accurate 30-minute delivery windows predicted from historical traffic and order data, and find stores curated to their neighborhood’s tastes—transforming raw data into intuitive, time-saving convenience.
The Transaction as an Outcome, Not the Goal
The store of the future is not a warehouse. It is a networked platform. Its success is measured not just in sales per square foot, but in engagement per visit, the strength of its partner ecosystem, and its cultural resonance.
By designing for commerce as a curated service, for connection as a core utility, and for culture as a key differentiator, retailers can build physical spaces that are not just surviving the digital age but thriving within it. The transaction is no longer the singular goal of the store visit; it is the natural outcome of a valuable and valued platform experience.
Retail’s next chapter will be written by stores that function as platforms — shaping commerce, curation, connection, and culture, with the transaction as the outcome rather than the aim.
Prophet helps retailers design these experiences to deepen relevance, loyalty, and drive uncommon growth.
Beyond the Hype: Why AI-enhanced brands still need human creativity
In a world of infinite AI content, human-driven distinction is the only remaining competitive advantage.
AI has quickly moved from the margins of creative work to being central to how brands develop content, communicate, and ultimately compete. AI models have evolved from little more than highly trained toys to equalizing tools that are deeply entrenched in business and leisure.
From the nearly $2 trillion AI bubble—echoing the pattern and amplifying the scale of the dot-com bubble of the 90s—to the more than 600 AI mergers and acquisitions in recent months, to social media feeds littered with AI images that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing: the hype is undeniable. But the hype has peaked. The conversation has shifted away from what AI can do to the results it can actually deliver. A shift that’s given way to agentic AI—systems that don’t just respond, but reason, plan, and act.
And adoption is widespread. So much that operationalizing agentic workflows at speed and scale is no longer a “nice to have” for brands, but the growing standard.
“Artificial intelligence is not a substitute for human intelligence; it is a tool to amplify human creativity and ingenuity.”
— Fei-fei Li, AI Innovator, Researcher, And Professor
The Verbal Branding team at Prophet has been both pioneering and living this new reality. Yes, adapting and streamlining workflows and wielding new tools that sharpen our skillsets, but more excitingly, seeing new ways that we can accelerate the creative cycle, and push brands forward.
And in this world of AI-enabled creative, there are a few principles we are currently living by to ensure creative expressions are just as meaningful, but relevant.
Content Homogenization Will Proliferate
Even as automation threatens various sectors, creative problem-solving roles, like brand strategist and writers, will survive and thrive with increased productivity from AI (according to a Forrester report on U.S. advertising agencies). In fact, freelance communication jobs have grown by 25% as more AI-adjacent positions in machine learning begin to decline.
Because, without humans to create and guide, the race to innovate with AI will become a “race to the middle.” If models are trained on AI-generated content or generally draw from the same pool of sources, it all blends, the lines blur, and the friction that brands need to be memorable is lost in a sea of sameness. It’s become so obvious and average that 82% of people can spot AI-generated content—overusing cliches, repeating sentence constructs, and using perfect grammar while lacking feeling entirely.
Even AI companies know that a human touch makes content compelling. OpenAI’s first brand campaign was shot, unironically, on 35mm film, creating an authentic and slightly unpolished atmosphere that avoids the sometimes too-sterile look of all-AI visuals.
As companies continue to leverage AI in bigger and bolder ways, one central theme is clear: AI-created content isn’t inherently strong. But AI-enhanced content can be.
Creative Rigor Will Lead in the Era of AI
Now more than ever, businesses must harness the power of brand building: their most visible and often most valuable business asset. Defining the foundations of a brand is too critical to be relegated to AI, but these tools can be used to scale branded content consistently and effectively.
Going forward, brand systems must be AI-native. Keeping the same rigor, insights, and creativity that ensure brands meet a given moment, while also staying easy to activate by people and augmented by AI. All without sacrificing originality and intent.
Prophet’s Perspective on AI in Creative
We’re developing AI products that support our clients’ ambitions—and embedding AI in the Prophet creative process itself. Not outsourcing our thinking by any stretch, but allowing us to stretch our creativity.
From consumer fashion brands to B2B institutional investors to iconic entertainment platforms, we’ve helped brands create and adopt agentic AI in several high-touch, high-effort marketing endeavors.
Automating how users submit requests for, evaluate, and even generate new descriptive names for products and features
Developing and training AI agents with fully developed brand voice and brand messaging guidelines
Pulling multiple agents together into custom interfaces for multi-modal content creation and governance (e.g., defining briefs, writing content, and scoring drafts against brand inputs)
Whether building custom agents on their preferred platforms or on Prophet’s own, we ensure brand communicators not only have the ability to execute content at scale but have an operationalized means of ongoing brand education. Meaning, that as the brand evolves, so will the people that make it and the AI that scales it.
With an orchestrated network of specialized agents working across an entire content workflow, human minds can continue to focus on what only they can do. The thinking, the instinct, and the creativity it takes to make a brand feel genuine. Drawing on our own uniquely human experiences, exploring nuance and shades of gray, and regularly straying from convention with unexpected words and turns of phrase that make people smile. This leaves the channel adaptation, consistency checks, and stress-testing to AI and the ambition, nuance, and originality to people.
Even amid the new reality of a breakneck pace of change, human imagination steadies brands with what makes them distinct. As AI capabilities get smarter, faster, and stronger, they can help us push the bounds of what we’re able to create and do.
Staying relentlessly relevant means staying at the helm, leading with strong, expertly developed verbal identities and using AI to inspire rather than imitate—or replace—creativity. The brands that win the next decade will have compelling voices and AI-powered content operations built to express them at scale—with precision and without creative compromise.
Prophet, and the many creative humans who comprise it, builds to win.
Luxury in Germany is becoming less about dreaming big and more about feeling safe. After years of economic instability, global conflict, and social strain, German consumers are recalibrating what “luxury” really means.
These insights come from Prophet’s latest Consumer Generation Premium and Luxury Study, based on a survey of 1,000 German consumers spanning Gen Z through Baby Boomers. First launched in 2018 and now conducted for the fifth time, the research explores shared patterns and generational differences across values, luxury perceptions, brand and product expectations, buyer journeys, purchasing behavior (including AI), and, of course, the implications for business.
Since we began studying this market, the shift has become unmistakable. What once centered on material ambition has steadily given way, across generations, to a desire for reassurance. In 2026, stability now outweighs status and upward mobility, with financial independence, relationships, and health defining what premium truly means.
One explanation is that in an era of heightened uncertainty, consumers are retreating toward what they can physically own, control, and secure.
According to Jörg Meurer, Partner at Prophet, “The current data is heavily influenced by a “poly-crisis” environment, including economic uncertainty, global conflict and political instability. These macro-factors are now directly reflected in consumer sentiment and core values.”
This shift is most visible among Millennials. Once seen as the generation driving cultural and economic change, they now show broad fatigue. Nearly every value and life priority dimension has weakened, suggesting mounting pressure, overload, and disillusionment rather than confidence or momentum.
Gen Z shows a different but equally telling shift, stepping back from activism and traditional success. While their core idealism remains intact, many feel caught between strong values and a growing sense of powerlessness to effect real change in an increasingly volatile world. Instead, more are turning inward, placing greater emphasis on personal meaning and belief systems, including religion. This signals a move from trying to change the world to trying to understand it.
Baby Boomers, by contrast, remain the most stable cohort. They continue to value heritage brands, high‑end service, and familiar luxury codes, while maintaining relatively strong environmental and sustainability beliefs. In a volatile environment, they are the segment most anchored in continuity.
While luxury brands still attract consumers, loyalty is weakening. Across generations, brands remain important reference points, yet only Baby Boomers stay truly loyal. Buyers are more selective and cautious: quality, durability, functionality, design, and great service still matter, but expectations are lower than in the past.
At the same time, premium customers are questioning price markups for image and emotion, becoming more price‑sensitive. Interestingly, visible logos and statement luxury are making a comeback, with fewer purchases being made, but each one obviously carrying more symbolic weight.
According to Meurer, “As expected, AI is transforming every stage of the luxury buying journey and is not just a “youth play” but also widely adopted by older generations, such as the growing willingness across all generations to let AI agents make purchasing decisions.”
For brands at the premium end of the market, there are profound implications with regard to brand management and their go-to-market strategy.
Reassurance beats aspiration: Consumers aren’t looking to be dazzled. They want brands they can trust, that feel stable, clear, and genuinely useful.
No one‑size‑fits‑all consumer: Growth requires sharper segmentation: Gen Z seeks purpose and agency, Millennials want convenience and relief, and Boomers value recognition and reliability.
Brands must prove relevance, not just heritage: Brand equity still matters, but history alone doesn’t sell. Luxury brands must turn their promise into clear performance, problem‑solving, and everyday relevance.
Practical value defines modern luxury: Convenience, wellbeing, and service now drive premium appeal. Saving time, reducing complexity, and delivering comfort through high‑touch (often AI‑enabled) service increasingly shape buying decisions.
Technology must be useful and credible: Consumers expect tech to solve real problems, not just impress with innovation.
Convenience is the new luxury – wellbeing is the business: Convenience-led products and services that save time and reduce complexity, while enhancing physical and emotional wellbeing, are becoming the defining expression of luxury for a new generation of consumers.
The same logic applies to employer brands: In a climate of crisis fatigue, employer attractiveness is increasingly defined by stability, purpose, development opportunities, and psychological safety. Reassurance a core value proposition not only for customers, but for talent as well.
Luxury is entering a reassurance era, where trust, usefulness, and stability matter more than spectacle or status. Brands that adapt to this shift, across generations, channels, and technologies, will be best positioned to stay relevant in uncertain times.
Four areas that shape merger and acquisition value creation.
Despite growth being the primary rationale behind most merger and acquisition (M&A) deals, too often, transactions close without creating a stronger business. Harvard Business Review estimates that 70–90% of deals fail to realize their intended value.
Recent Prophet research offers a useful lens on why. We analyzed the S&P Composite 1500 and identified 179 companies that outperformed their industries by delivering exceptional, sustained growth between 2019 and 2024.
On average, these companies delivered 27% annual revenue growth, compared with 6% for others. We then looked more closely at the Uncommon Growth companies that were active in M&A, alongside major transactions in the past five years, to identify the choices that distinguish stronger performers.
The differentiator is rarely the deal itself, but what companies do after the strategy is set. Top performers move beyond treating M&A as a financial event, using it instead to build a business that is more relevant, more capable, and better positioned than either company alone.
1. They Articulate the Story of Value Early – and Create Immediate Narrative Clarity for Investors, Employees and Customers
M&A winners give the market a clear reason to care, articulating early a concise story of value that explains why the deal happened, what it unlocks, and how it will make the combined business more compelling. The strongest stories are not abstract or purely financial; they specify the core capability, adjacency, or platform advantage the transaction is meant to create.
This clarity provides investors with a basis for belief, helps employees understand what is being built, and equips commercial teams to talk about additive value that the deal creates with prospects and customers. When the value story is vague or overly technical, attention quickly shifts to back-end mechanics while the growth case remains unclear.
In some of the strongest cases, M&A did more than add capabilities or revenue. It helped shift the company’s frame of reference in the market. For example, Xylem used the Evoqua acquisition to move from being seen more narrowly as an equipment and infrastructure player toward a broader water technology, treatment and services platform with stronger recurring-revenue characteristics. Nasdaq used Adenza to reinforce its shift from market operator toward a higher growth, more software and solutions-led financial technology and infrastructure business. In both cases, the deal supported a stronger investor narrative around quality of growth, business mix and margin potential.
2. They Define and Actively Manage Brand Portfolio and Architecture Logic
Ambiguous brand portfolios create friction by confusing customers, diluting commercial focus, duplicating investment, and slowing execution.
M&A winners are deliberate from the outset about brand portfolio and architecture: which brands to integrate, which to keep distinct, and the role each should play in supporting growth. They do not leave these questions unresolved or assume they can be addressed later. When managed well, brand architecture clarifies the offer, helps leadership prioritize investment, and gives the organization a disciplined path for building, combining, or retiring brands over time. Importantly, they also treat brand architecture as a living system, to be actively managed as the business evolves and priorities shift.
Our research shows that top performers made these choices explicit and followed through. Home Depot preserved the SRS brand and operating model, which delivered $6.4B in fiscal 2024 sales. Extra Space, by contrast, consolidated under one brand after concluding dual brands lacked payoff. UBS made the clearest call, retiring Credit Suisse entirely. The common thread is not one brand versus many, but early, deliberate choice and sustained execution.
3. They Treat Brand as an Operating System, not Just a Communications Asset
The best M&As do not treat brand as a late-stage communications wrapper. Rather, brand functions as an operating system: the organizing idea that connects business ambition, market confidence, and internal alignment. It defines what the combined company stands for, how it creates value, and how decisions should be made—across client engagement, sales, talent, partnerships, and leadership behavior.
Used this way, brand shapes integration rather than decorating it. It guides how the business is integrated, how the new company is perceived, investment decisions, and can inspire confidence. Done well; it turns a transaction into more than a legal or financial event, providing a unifying logic that supports execution and growth.
Our research shows that top performers used brand to drive growth. Carrier positioned Viessmann as a premier brand and platform in sustainable climate solutions. UBS applied the same principle at far greater complexity when migrating Credit Suisse, using a clear brand narrative, “Banking is our Craft” to reinforce reputation, retain and grow client assets.
4. They Strategically Align Culture and Performance
Culture is one of the clearest differentiators between deals that build momentum and those that stall. While hard to measure in a short financial window, its effects surface quickly. When leadership is unclear or behaviors misaligned, value creation slows. When leadership creates a post‑deal environment that is coherent, purposeful, and well led, the organization can forge ahead.
Culture should not be treated as a soft topic or parallel workstream, rather a catalyst for success. Leaders define the values, behaviors, and ways of working that guide the combined company, shaping collaboration, decisions, and change. Further, in industries experiencing talent scarcity or where there’s heightened competition to attract in-demand talent pools, culture becomes a critical source of advantage.
Our research shows that this discipline translates into execution. Companies such as Xylem, Emerson, and Globus Medical made culture visible through integration outcomes, achieving early synergies and strong post‑close performance. This reinforces broader evidence that effective cultural management materially increases the likelihood of value realization.
M&A does not create uncommon growth by default. Even well-conceived deals fall short when leadership treats them as financial events followed by cleanup.
The success of M&A transactions hinge on deliberate choices by leadership: what the combined business stands for, how it operates, and what customers and employees should experience. When those decisions are made early and executed consistently, M&A becomes more than a transaction. It becomes a platform for uncommon growth.
To find out more about how to realize the real potential behind mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs, visit our M&A growth acceleration hub.
Chinese Brands Going Global: Five Strategic Shifts to Unleash Growth
As Chinese brands expand into the global market, they must move from exporting products to building brands and shaping consumer trends to drive uncommon growth with lasting competitiveness.
With the global talent dividend, fast-evolving AI technologies, and reshaping of consumer journeys, Chinese brands have entered a period of accelerated growth on the global stage. Companies are moving beyond simply “going out” in geographic terms and into a phase of “going in”—deep local embedding—where China’s manufacturing strengths are integrated with the ambition to build world-class brands.
As a result of our experience helping Chinese brands develop overseas growth strategies, we’ve identified five strategic shifts critical for success.
1. From “Channel Push” to “Brand Pull”
Chinese companies excel at pushing products efficiently into channels through their mature supply chains and precise e-commerce operations. However, over-reliance on channel push can turn the brand into an “invisible supplier,” weakening its identity and meaning that would resonate with end consumers.
In the next phase of global growth, Chinese brands are adopting a dual-engine model—protecting channel advantages while building brand strength. Consumers not only can buy the products that are accessible or affordable, but also want to buy, enabling more sustainable, long-term growth.
For instance, DJI established a clear, innovation-led brand identity early, standing for reliable, creator-friendly aerial imaging while operating a comprehensive distribution network. This helped it earn trust, mindshare, and premium positioning across major international markets.
2. From Product Function to “Differentiated Value
Chinese companies are strong at solving problems, but often less so at creating meaning. Many brands communicate primarily through functional narratives—features, specifications, and prices, pushing them into price-based, homogeneous competition. As a result, they fail to make a distinctive impression on local consumers’ minds.
To create meaningful values, brands must move beyond functional performance to define differentiated benefits by understanding different consumer segments and consumption scenarios. The goal is to shift from being seen as a substitute option or commodity to becoming a preferred or premium choice in the category.
As BYD expands into Europe, it complements channel execution with a clear sustainability-led brand promise, reinforced through brand campaigns and initiatives such as sustainability festivals and participation in major climate-focused events. These efforts help the brand build meaning and trust beyond functional vehicle attributes.
3. From Hero Product to Product Portfolio
A single successful product can ignite growth, but it can also limit expansion if the company gets ‘locked’ into one item. Brands should take a future-back approach early—designing hero products with a value proposition that supports long-term, sustainable growth. In this way, the hero product is not only a sales driver but also sets expectations for what the brand stands for.
From that center point, the brand can build a cross-category product matrix that offers solutions for diverse consumer needs. Only by building a tiered product portfolio can brands create a clear path to scale in global markets.
A good example is Xiaomi, which built global awareness through cost-effective smartphones but anchored its expansion in a consistent “tech enthusiast” identity—using that credibility to grow into a broad, tiered ecosystem spanning everyday smart-home appliances and devices as well as more advanced innovation bets such as robotics and electric vehicles.
4. From Platform Traffic to Omnichannel Experience
Many Chinese companies have become e-commerce experts that master the algorithms of platforms such as Amazon or Shopee. But this growth model contains a major risk: consumers may only remember buying something “on Amazon” while having no connection to the brand itself. These brands struggle to build meaningful brand equity, thus losing the ability to re-engage and retain customers throughout the full customer journey.
In the next phase of growth, brands must think beyond driving sales on e-commerce platforms and reimagine their digital storefront as a core brand-building base, and from there, create true omnichannel experiences. The strategic shift is from short-term acquisition to long-term customer engagement—building repeat purchase, advocacy, and a more defensible competitive position.
5. From Fragmented Voice to Consistent Messaging and Execution
As AI plays a larger role in discovery and evaluation, consistency across all touchpoints becomes crucial. AI and large language models scan internet-wide data to model brand perception: when official messaging, user reviews, and real experiences are highly consistent, the brand is given higher weighting and is more likely to be recommended; when messaging is fragmented or contradictory, it is treated as ‘noise.’
Brands today must be consistent inside and out, extending what they stand for across every touchpoint. Consistency over time builds credibility and improves conversion, retention, and reputation in the age of AI-driven recommendations.
The new era of globalization is not only about entering more markets; it is about elevating brand strength for uncommon growth. In more competitive environments, a brand’s staying power depends on whether it has real clarity, consistency, and customer preference—not only operational strength.
That staying power is built through:
Brand pull to complement channel strength
Differentiated value beyond product function
A future-back product portfolio rather than a single hero product
An omnichannel customer experience to reduce platform dependence
Consistent messaging and execution to build credibility in an AI-driven buying process
When Chinese enterprises extend their manufacturing capabilities into these five areas, they can move from exporting products to building brands—and shape global consumer trends with lasting competitiveness.
