Ben Verleysen

Don't say it too loudly in the boardroom of a large holding company, but everyone in the industry has known it for a while: brands are increasingly going direct. No pitch, no briefing, no layers of strategists, no separate media buying department, no commission on the commission. Just a brand working with people who think fast, make fast, and don't need six weeks to push a decision through three hierarchical layers. And it works. That's uncomfortable for the traditional agency world. But it's...

Marketing has never been more powerful. AI generates content in seconds.Campaigns optimise themselves.CRMs track every interaction. Dashboards show real-time data. Technologically, we’re living in a golden age. And yet, across mid-sized and larger organisations alike, we keep seeing the same pattern: Lots of activity.Lots of tools. Lots of dashboards. Very little real control. The illusion of progress Having a marketing team is not maturity.Having a CRM is not maturity.Implementing automation...

Let’s be honest. Dealer marketing at many brands is still a patchwork of disconnected initiatives . One dealer “also doing something with Google”. An HQ campaign that never really lands locally. Content used differently everywhere or not at all. That may have worked five years ago. It doesn’t today. And it certainly won’t in 2026. The reality is straightforward:dealer networks only scale when marketing is clear, controlled and scalable without losing local dealer impact. There is no time...