I am not a resolutions person. But I do appreciate the power of a retrospective and the freshness of a new beginning. And looking back on 2025, a few themes were anything but subtle. Some events required us to adjust our perspectives, and others changed the shape and tone of conversations with friends and family. The most defining shift of the past year was the infiltration of AI into every nook and cranny of our personal and professional lives. That last bit made it hard to see 2025 as about anything other than realness.
But the question of realness isn’t new. Debates over how to preserve—or regain—authenticity, especially in content marketing and communications circles, are decades-long. In the early days of the internet, the Cluetrain Manifesto told us that markets are conversations, and people can smell corporate theater from a mile away. Then Edelman started tracking trust from every angle year after year, and while the numbers shift slightly depending on the moment and the market, the consistent message has been that trust is fragile. The answer in an increasingly automated world must be to reconnect with what is real.
For a while, this was where the industry was going. “Realness” was promoted across keynotes and bestsellers for so long that it eventually became white noise. That is, until 2025 arrived, and the volume of “pretty good” yet disconnected content skyrocketed. We found ourselves inundated with messaging that sounded right and tested well, but felt suspiciously hollow and a little too polished, as if it came straight from the uncanny valley. And we can see more of it coming. A tidal wave of meaningless content for us all to swipe through for the rest of time. Which raises the primary question that 2025 forced content marketers to confront: If authenticity has been the assignment for decades, why are we still struggling to produce it?
The short answer: brands over-optimized.
For years, more and more companies tried to take shortcuts, telling themselves they could create connection in a fraction of the time and with far less energy or investment than emotional connection has always required. In the process, the value of communicating with nuance, empathy, and authenticity was obscured. With AI—and maybe to a lesser degree, the countless tools and technologies that came before it—marketing at that lowest common denominator became really, really cost-effective.
That’s why I don’t think the main story of 2025 was “AI is here.” It’s also why I don’t think authenticity and realness should be thought of as a resolution-worthy trend (great news for us anti-resolutionists). It’s bigger than that. The main story was that AI made the old authenticity argument mean something different. It pushed us so far over the edge that we began to look for a signs of realness in places we hadn’t before. In things that used to be seen as errors or problems: a typo in an email, an inconsistent cadence in a piece of writing, a take that is just a little too hot.
Inprela’s President and Healthcare Market Lead, Sara Payne recently shared an optimistic view of why this all matters, particularly for content marketers. “There’s a growing perception that AI-generated content is lazy, untrustworthy, or less credible—and that perception is now shaping behavior. As a result, we’re seeing a real shift toward content that feels unmistakably human. Sharper points of view, fewer words, more specificity, more emotional intelligence. In that sense, this moment may actually raise the bar.”
As a result, the shift we’ll see in 2026 is brands recommitting to realness and authenticity in a new more deliberate way. It will start to be seen less as a trend or strategy that gets “achieved” once a KPI hits its target, but as an ongoing effort and a way of doing business well. The brands that succeed will be those that build authenticity into their business models and cultures just as much as their brand narratives. Their executives will leave space for human involvement and the messiness that comes with it. They’ll invest in authentically seeing and connecting with their customers because it is effective and essential, not because it is easy.
Sara’s practical advice for brands centers around specificity, restraint, and point of view. Invest in one piece of thoughtful content that resonates because you truly have something thoughtful and resonant to say. Don’t be afraid to have a point of view or show the nuance that makes you authentic and human. In 2026, authenticity and realness in communications shouldn’t be a bandwagon to hop on or a trend to nail down. It’s an ongoing effort that requires consistent commitment and real investment in the long term, even when that “fresh start” feeling wears off.
