A note on the 2026 economic squeeze, the structural rebasing of consumer expectations, and what the latest CMO Survey reveals about how brand investment is being tested.
A quiet shift is taking place in how consumers are deciding what they will pay for, and it is going to test brand discipline in ways most companies are not prepared for.
The 35th edition of the Duke Fuqua CMO Survey, published in March 2026, contains a set of findings that read as routine and are not. Almost half of companies are raising prices in response to tariffs. Among firms changing their investment posture, those cutting outnumber those expanding by nearly four to one. Customer retention has overtaken acquisition as the top marketing priority. Sixty percent of marketing budgets are now being directed at selling more of existing products to existing customers.
Each of these statistics has been reported. What has not been said clearly is what they add up to.
What is happening to the consumer
Tariffs and inflation have squeezed household budgets in ways that have not been felt for a generation. Discretionary income has narrowed. Consumers are making sharper choices about what is genuinely worth paying for. They are not falling out of love with brands. They are making harder demands of them.
The buyer of 2026 is asking different questions than the buyer of 2022. Does this work. Does it last. Is the premium I am paying matched by the value I receive. These are not aspirational questions. They are functional ones, and they are being asked with an honesty that has not been part of the consumer mindset in over a decade of cheap money and easy credit.
Why this is a brand discipline test
This is the moment that separates brand work built on real differentiation from brand work built on assumed loyalty. The companies that invested in genuine excellence, in product quality, in customer experience, in earning trust over years, are seeing their pricing power hold up. The companies that coasted on category presence and ran the same playbook as their competitors are watching pricing power erode quickly.
Tariffs did not cause this. They simply made the difference visible.
The reassurance narrative is not a retreat from brand
The reassurance narrative now appearing across categories is not a retreat from brand. It is a return to the hardest version of brand work, the version that says we will be the ones our customers can rely on when nothing else feels stable.
That is a more demanding promise than aspiration ever was. It requires the entire company to deliver, not just the marketing team to communicate. It exposes any gap between what is said and what is done. The brands gaining ground in 2026 are not necessarily the ones with the largest media budgets. They are the ones whose entire operations have been organised around the consistency of the promise they make.
What this means for marketing investment
This shift has implications most leadership teams have not yet absorbed. Marketing budgets are being scrutinised more carefully than they have been in years. Cutting brand investment in this moment removes the very thing that makes one company recognisably different from another, at exactly the moment when distinction matters most. Sharper, more disciplined brand work is what allows pricing power to hold when everything else is being squeezed.
Brand investment in 2026 is not a luxury that needs to survive the downturn. It is the discipline that determines who comes out on the other side with pricing power intact.
The structural read on this moment
The economists describe this kind of moment as a structural rebasing of consumer expectations. The marketers will eventually call it the era when brand work had to earn its place all over again. Both will be partly right.
What is true now is that buyers are getting more demanding, and the discipline of brand work is being tested in ways it has not been for a generation.
Photo by Emil Kalibradov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-a-wallet-in-a-pocket-7085786/