First Coined In 2015 Reluctant Marketing trend icon

Reluctant Marketing

As marketing shifts away from pure promotion, leaders and organizations abandon traditional silos, embrace content marketing, and invest in the customer experience.

The 2015 Non-Obvious Trend Report, where Reluctant Marketing was first coined

First published in the 2015 Non-Obvious Trend Report →

Trend Longevity Rating

B Graded B in 2026 ·
a strong prediction that largely held up

How this trend held up

Marketing continues to evolve away from promotion and to incorporate lessons from sales, innovation, research, data, and more, which leads to marketers' reluctance about what to call themselves.

Every past trend prediction is re-reviewed and graded with a Trend Longevity Rating, measuring how much each originally curated trend still matters years later.

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