The antidote
to brain rot:
Why brand experience is the key to engagement in the year ahead.

Brand Experience Trend Report 2025

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As we celebrate our 20th anniversary as a global brand experience and engagement agency, we reflect on two decades of profound digital and cultural change. From the rise of smartphones and social media, to the Uberisation of services and the emergence of AI, these shifts have redefined how we connect with one another and live our lives.

Yet despite this progress, these changes have come with a complex, mixed impact, such as increased screen time, feelings of isolation, the pressure of constant connectivity, the weight of information overload and mental health struggles.

These dualities – the benefits and burdens of our digitally connected world – are shaping the future of brand experience. In this report, we explore eight key trends reflecting how cultural and technological shifts are influencing consumer behaviour and brand engagement. From fandoms to absurdism to anti-algorithm behaviour, we examine how brands can create more meaningful, empathetic experiences that resonate in a world that is simultaneously more connected and more fragmented.

This brand experience trend report is brought to you by The Futures Lab, our in-house research and development lab. It was established to drive innovative brand experience solutions in our ever-changing world, and is informed by market intelligence tools, social listening, and AI audience profiling.

As we mark 20 years, we remain committed to helping brands connect deeply with increasingly mindful, aware, and discerning consumers. If you would like to arrange a 20-minute, no-obligation conversation about how Sense can help you apply this thinking, get in touch and we’d be glad to help you.

hayley.james@senselondon.com

London

5th Floor Century House
100 Oxford Street
London
W1D 1LN

New York

243 E 14th St,
#2, New York,
NY, 10003

Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy or amplify your shopper marketing moves. Get them here at The Futures Lab.

Connect with us

London

5th Floor Century House
100 Oxford Street
London
W1D 1LN

New York

243 E 14th
#2 C/O SQ
New York
NY 10003

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Discover our latest guides to help brighten your brand experience strategy here at The Future Lab

Connect with us

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Experiential

Whether it be Festivals, Trade Shows, PR Stunts, Installations or Pop Ups to name a few, we believe brand experiences are one of the most powerful forms of marketing to impact consumer perception and attitude towards a brand. They can create real behaviour change when born out of a deep consumer insight allied to a compelling idea. And it’s these fundamentals we look to get right whatever the live, virtual or hybrid task in hand.

Sampling.

Sampling is all too often perceived as an unsophisticated, somewhat ‘blunt’ marketing tool. Over the last 16 years Sense has pioneered a set of strategic principles which underpin our unique approach to sampling and which are highly measurable from both an ROI and consumer behaviour change perspective. We will happily guide brands through the myriad of sampling channels and products available so whether it’s mass face to face sampling, in offices, digitally, at home or just a strategic framework that you are after, we can provide a blend of tactics to fulfil both brand and sales objectives.

Retail.

With many clients now focused on activating in channels more closely associated with a sale, our heavyweight retail experience closes the loop on a typical shopper journey by encompassing the moment of truth in store. Be it prize promotions, shopper toolkits, key visual creation, path-to-purchase communications, category strategy, B2B campaigns or Amazon optimisation, our goal is to create forward-thinking retail experiences that deliver demonstrable brand value. We aim to make ‘retail fail’ a thing of the past for ambitious brands looking to thrive is an ever-competitive landscape and believe our streamlined team is perfectly placed to do this.

Foresight.

Knowing what will keep a brand bright, exciting, and vital means we need to keep one step ahead of the curve. Our thought leadership hub, The Futures Lab, helps us to understand the marketing trends of tomorrow. It’s also the origin of strategies and methodologies which have created over 65 award-winning campaigns. 

Rigour.

Creativity is nothing without results. And we know that commissioning bold concepts, capable of changing minds, requires reassurance that it’s the right thing to do. 

Data, insights, and research precedes every campaign we do, and our proprietary measurement tool, EMR, gives us a decade of campaign performance metrics. Which is why we’re proud to have been recognised as industry-leading by brands like The Economist, Coca-Cola, and Molson Coors. 

Trust.

We believe brand experience is inherently more varied than other forms of marketing. No formula, no template, no cookie-cutter approach – and often no precedent. 

That’s why, Sense places trust at the heart of its business – grounded in teamwork between our people and yours. Our processes are efficient, our senior team stay involved and our partnership mentality had helped us sustain powerful client relationships, some lasting over 10 years.