Zeno Group today launched Collab by ZDX, a new global creator marketing offering from the firm’s Digital Experience team (ZDX). Collab is designed to eliminate the tradeoffs brands face between speed, relevance, reputation, and performance as creators play an increasingly influential role across culture and commerce.

New Zeno Group research among senior marketing leaders in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and India reveals a disconnect between how business growth is created and how companies manage it. Reputation, stakeholder response, and how companies are interpreted by people and machines increasingly shape growth alongside traditional marketing, challenging long-standing boundaries between marketing and communications.

Growth is no longer shaped primarily by advertising, marketing spend or customer acquisition. According to new research from Zeno Group, senior marketing leaders increasingly believe reputation, trust and earned influence play a critical role in business performance alongside creativity. Yet  organizational structures and  overall  remits  are proving to be barriers toward managing this evolution. 

Zeno Group unveiled global research showing the unprecedented influence of communications across business strategy, growth, risk, and workforce decisions. Yet most communications leaders say they are not fully prepared for what the next four years will demand.

Something feels off as we move through 2026. 

Across culture, work, and technology, contradictions are stacking up. Long-held expectations are collapsing. And people are quietly realizing that the world no longer lines up the way they were told it would. When that happens, they don’t opt out; they adapt. They start trying to create alignment on their own, just to get through the day.