Groundhog’s Day in Marketing: Digital Déjà Vu of an Amnesiac Age

By Claudian Navin Stanislaus

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana

There’s something oddly exhilarating about being on the cusp of the next big thing. That quiet rush of knowing you’re ahead of the curve, in on a secret before it breaks. It’s exhilarating. Addictive, even.

The kind of buzz marketers live for.

The way some marketers recite every new trend like a mantra, can be concerning!

We pride ourselves on being early adopters. The ones who see patterns in the noise. Who spot the shift before it hits. Of course, the way some recite every new trend like a mantra — with the wide-eyed wonder of a toddler chasing bubbles — can be… concerning.

But most of us, aren’t so easily bedazzled by glitter, entranced by jargon, fooled by freshly baked metrics, or intoxicated by the rush of trendsetting… or jacking.

What we often hail as disruption… is just déjà vu in drag… familiar patterns recycled for an industry too young to remember

We’re smarter than that. Or at least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves. And yet, by that same instinct — to be first, to be right, to be remembered (or possibly, the fear of missing out) — what we often hail as disruption, is just déjà vu in drag.

Perhaps getting caught up in the swirl of each new hue is forgivable. But should it excuse the tunnel vision that blinds us to the truth that many so-called breakthroughs are simply new shades of old colours — recycled, rebranded, and resold— to an industry too young to remember, or too cautious to call out the familiar patterns, lest they be branded as relics clinging to the past?

But history, like a tired rerun, keeps coming back. New cast. New script. Though the plot remains recognisably the same. And somehow, we still act surprised… and call it evolution.

Granularity was gold. Intangibles… an excuse of people who can’t prove what worked.

Remember how reach and frequency were cast aside as archaic artefacts of the broadcast era? Mocked by the disciples of the precision and programmatic gospel. Granularity was gold. Audiences sliced so thin, it felt surgical. It promised an imminent future of true attribution – sneering at the notion of intangibles.

Brand? Emotion? Soft sciences. Fuzzy concepts for those who couldn’t prove what worked. The future would be smart, targeted, trackable. Anything less? Inefficient. Wasteful. Primitive. We would finally know “which half of our advertising worked”.

But in the margins of all this measurable magic… we lost the plot!

Somewhere between the dashboards and the data lanes, precision, programmatic and attribution began to dissolve like a mirage in the mist. A new sermon emerged… not everything that matters can be measured.

Brands were starved of oxygen. Creativity became an afterthought. Context didn’t matter, just how the platforms delivered audiences. Emotion was downgraded to engagement. Viewability became the new vanity metric.

Then, somewhere between the dashboards and the data lanes, the narrative began to… stutter.

The goalposts shifted. Then shifted again. And again. Precision and programmatic; once hailed as the ‘second coming’ of the data age, began to look more like false prophets.

Hyper-targeting devolved into a mess of fraud, frequency waste, and ads no one remembered. And with it, attribution — digital’s holy grail — started to dissolve like a mirage in the mist. Weighed down by complexity, battered by the cookie conundrum, trapped behind rising privacy walls, and fragmented across devices that refused to talk to each other.

The irony?

It’s when we now hear a new sermon; from the very digital pulpit that once mocked the intangibility of brand-building (or perhaps it’s a new generation that didn’t read the footnotes!), now proclaiming that “not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that’s measured matters“.

They call for connections over contact points… emotions over attribution.

The fundamentals never changed. Only the medium did.

This isn’t a revelation. It’s a rediscovery. And we seem oblivious that we’ve come full circle, or in denial that we’re back where we started.

Brand building matters. Reach, emotion, story, context — the fundamentals — never actually changed. We were simply told to stop believing in them, merely because the medium changed.

Maybe it’s generational amnesia. Or the shame of falling for the digital delusion. Perhaps it’s the guilt of being complicit, even when the pattern was unmistakable. Funny isn’t it, how progress so often circles back to anointing the very things it once dismissed?

This isn’t a dig at the data-driven generation… the industry has always been prone to infatuation with novelty. Assuming that everything new, must be new indeed.

But this isn’t a dig at the digital generation, or of data-driven marketing. Far from it. Nor is it a rallying cry for the magic of creativity either.

The truth is more humbling…

The marketing industry has always been prone to cycles of over infatuation with novelty. Sometimes premature. Often willfully ignorant of the past. Quivering over technology, innovation and next big things.

Mistaking new tools and trends for new strategy. Assuming that everything new to you, must be new indeed. And when we finally realise otherwise – we quietly buck the trend, hoping no one’s noticed.

There’s always an emerging gospel, preached with the certainty of its age.

Take the 1950s and ’60s, when the gospel was simple. Advertising should drive action. Here and now. The hard sell promised to drive it — fast, direct, persuasive— and if the message was strong enough, repeated often enough, results would surely follow.

It worked. For a time.

But as brands fought to the bottom in price wars, they became commoditised. Stripped of meaning beyond price and promotion. Loyalty weakened. Costs to drive each sale crept upward, as brands competed with louder offers instead of deeper connection.

Eventually, bloodied from self-sacrifice, the industry swung back toward the power of storytelling, emotional value of connections, and the enduring benefits of brand-building beyond the sale.

In the 1990s, it was a different promise. One of precision, rooted in the allure of deeper understanding. Psychographic targeting was the compelling promise of science. Segment consumers more cleverly, speak to them more personally, and brands would resonate more profoundly.

Mass reach? Deemed unsophisticated. Old thinking.

Some ideas, seem destined to run on a perpetual cycle.

It preached that we could speak more meaningfully to a tribe, rather than waste effort reaching the masses. But in chasing niches, many brands quietly lost visibility, and share. The uncomfortable truth re-emerged.

Growth comes from reaching as many people as possible, not from slicing the pie thinner. The art of broad, culturally resonant storytelling returned to balance the precision of segmentation.

Some ideas, of course, seem destined to run on a perpetual cycle.

Take the current call to humanise the brand in the age of conversational AI, chatbots, and virtual influencers. The promise is undeniable. But brands have been humanised since the late 19th century. Some of the oldest personifications — Bibendum (1898), Mr. Peanut (1916), Snap, Crackle & Pop (1933), and Tony the Tiger (1952) — still resonate today.

In the 1950s and ’60s, brands embraced mascots and jingles, giving products a face and a voice to connect with consumers. The heyday of the 1980s to 90s saw brand personality take centre stage. Positioning theory was full of archetypes and human traits. The brand wasn’t just a product… it was a person.

These were the fundamentals that turned transactions into connections, and connections into relationships. What created loyalty. What we compromised in pursuit of the supposed promises of true attribution.

If you dare to look, you will recognise many of today’s ‘innovations’ have semblance to concepts from the past.The tragedy is not that we forget it again and again.

Even with these few examples from the past, any astute marketer will recognise several variations of these same narratives in the seemingly new ideas. If you dare to look, many of today’s ‘innovations’ will have semblance to concepts from the past.

Some even recurring in the present. Each manifestation might have been heralded as a fresh idea; bundled with new insights, promising to ignite some quantum leap.

“There are but thirty-six dramatic situations, and all stories are built upon them.” — Georges Polti (1895)

And so it is with marketing. Not thirty-six, but in essence the concepts rarely change. Only the tools and mechanics do. The tragedy is not that we forget this once. It is that we forget it again and again. In an industry addicted to spotting trends, history is the one trend we never seem to notice.

Brands that endure reverberate quietly, in tune with the consumer’s own rhythm… consistent, dependable… until choice becomes unnecessary.

The lesson? It’s not that the new is wrong. It’s that it’s rarely as new as we believe. So rather than embracing it as a replacement for the old, perhaps the wiser course is to adapt it, in consideration of the old. That way, when the circus inevitably comes full circle again, we might at least be a step ahead of the game.

This is where the idea of entanglement comes into its own; not as a rigid framework, but as a lens, quietly weaving a brand into the rhythm of a consumer’s life, until its presence becomes a subconscious default.

Because the brands that endure aren’t the ones that shout the loudest. They’re the ones that reverberate quietly, in tune with the consumer’s own rhythm.

It’s the toothpaste reached for without thinking. The ride-hailing app thumbed instinctively. That level of default isn’t won through campaigns. It’s earned through relevance – by showing up in ways that feel consistent and dependable, until choice becomes unnecessary.

Human attention span has dropped to 8 seconds, and it’s fuels the industry’s obsession with novelty. But novelty each week… makes you the novelty!

We often hear the claim that the human attention span has dropped to 8 seconds — supposedly “shorter than a goldfish” —  and it’s such insights that fuels the industry’s obsession with novelty. To get noticed. And it works. But novelty each week… makes you the novelty.

Have you ever questioned the origin of that critical reflection of our times? Today, it’s been expanded to suggest that Gen Z have no attention span, no brand loyalty. It’s was report in a 2015 Microsoft study, conducted in Canada – that’s never been scientifically corroborated!

We have become adept at ‘blindspotting’… tuning to relevance. As brands spin faster on the trend treadmill to get noticed, are we losing resonance beyond the moment?

Is it really true? Or is it because of the hightened proficiency in filtering irrelevance we have developed, as a result of the media bombardment we all face today? Gen Z; and in fact, all generations exposed to today’s content volumes, have become adept at ‘blindspotting’.

They don’t lack loyalty. Consumers today are merely more adept at tuning to relevance.

As brands spin faster on the trend treadmill to get noticed, are we losing resonance beyond the moment?

Why are we surprised that a generation native to digital is adept at filtering noise? We all do it. We always have!

If we look back to the 1980s and ’90s, the industry was already questioning the effectiveness of the interruptive ad model amid rising Ad Clutter. There was a growing sense that audiences were becoming desensitised, even irritated.

They were tuning out, even honing the art of channel-surfing through commercial breaks. In response, we saw a golden age of creativity. Ads worth watching, brand integration, and early branded content that pulled audiences in, rather than pushed at them.

If this was recognised then, why are we surprised that a generation native to digital is even more adept at filtering what they consider noise? We all do it. We always have!

Digital didn’t escape the interruptive model – if anything, it doubled down on it!

We were promised that digital would be different. That it would respect attention, deliver relevance, and pull us in, not interrupt us. But the reality? It often became more intrusive, more cluttered, and more desperate for engagement than the ads it once mocked.

From pop-ups to retargeting to autoplay video (that latest being ads during a pause!), digital didn’t escape the interruptive model – if anything, it doubled down on it!

Now, as audiences tune out and ad blockers rise, we relearn an old truth; people don’t hate ads, they just hate bad content. And they hate being interrupted without reason.

While we question loyalty, brands themselves seem to be in a race to court the newest generation, often neglecting the customers already in hand — another recurring theme in recent times — but that’s a topic by itself.

Loyalty doesn’t grow in shallow soil. The brands that resonate with each generation stand for something.

The reality is, loyalty didn’t vanish with Gen Z. It simply doesn’t grow in shallow soil. The brands that resonate with each generation aren’t those changing their tune each week. They’re those that stand for something, and stand for it consistently. These fundamentals still apply. Even — especially — with Gen Z.

If we look closer, they are loyal, but only to the brands and products that have meaning to them.

When marketers ignore this — running on tactics instead of truths — they fail to create entanglement. Not because consumers don’t want to connect – but because brands give them nothing real to connect to.

When you try to mean different things to different people in an interconnected landscape, you risk meaning nothing to anyone.

Novelty… not resonance… is rewarded.

So as the wheels turn again, let’s not get trapped in the same arc — excitement, overuse, loss of trust, fatigue, retreat — then rediscovered by a new generation unaware of the last collapse. Why does it keep happening?

Because very few pause to ask… have we been here before?

Because the industry lacks memory. Because it’s always nice to believe we’re the first to see it. Because novelty; not resonance, is rewarded. Because marketing can get fixated on mediums and platforms.

But true innovation isn’t about blindly embracing the new; chasing every trend. It’s in consumerising. Not being distracted by the mediums or the tech, but on the enduring truths of behaviour, rhythm, trust, and meaning. It’s in crafting for people – not platforms.

It’s about resisting the Groundhog Day effect!

Until we stop chasing newness for newness’ sake, we’ll keep spinning in circles. But if we choose to pause… to remember… to embed the right rhythms into the brands we build – maybe this time, we won’t just turn the wheel.

Maybe we’ll shift the axle.

And as we stand at the brink of yet another so-called revolution — with AI poised to reshape how we create, communicate, and connect — this is an imperative, and no time for amnesia.

The promise of AI is immense, but so is the risk of accelerating the very cycles we’ve failed to break. Automation without reflection will not yield innovation – it will merely industrialise sameness at scale.

Certainly, I’m not the first to have seen, or said something about this jarring reality. But such realisation needs to be shared, discussed, and challenged. Until referencing the past becomes instinct… each time we embrace the prospects of something new and promising.

Not merely for caution, but to truly benefit from the best of both.

Because in the end, marketing isn’t about chasing trends. It’s about building brands that outlast them… and ensuring that what we create tomorrow is not just faster or louder – but wiser.