Change is accelerating, but the marketing rules aren’t disappearing in retail

Retail in 2026 feels breathless. New platforms, new technologies, AI-driven discovery and changing consumer expectations. Everything is moving faster than ever. The temptation for leaders is to chase what’s new, pivot constantly, and leave the past behind.

That’s a mistake.

Because while how we reach customers keeps changing, the fundamentals of marketing, leadership and consumer understanding don’t. Those basics are your north star, especially when the pace of change is disorientating.

The value of foundations: remember your training

I started my career at M&S as part of a comprehensive and, at that time, one of the UK’s very best management training programmes, learning very much from the ground up. I still draw on that experience today; it shaped everything that came after.

The training was deeply consumer-focused, commercial and people-led. You learned how customers actually behave, how profit is really made, and how to lead highly-effective teams. Many exceptional leaders have come through that programme, and I still carry those instincts 30 years on.

The key wasn’t learning speed; it was learning depth. We spent time truly understanding customers, experienced different parts of the business, and built confidence through repetition and responsibility.

You don’t see as much of that now. Expectations are higher, progression is faster, and patience is thinner. But there were good reasons for “time served”: it gave you judgement, confidence and perspective.

Those fundamentals don’t age, which is why I regularly go back to them.

When retail went digital, the consumer stayed central

Even in hyper-growth environments, those foundations mattered, especially in rule-breaking places like ASOS in its early days.

Online fashion was new. There was a lot of trial and error, and often we didn’t fully know what we were doing, just what we were aiming to do. But we did have a fundamental understanding of customers.

The pattern is consistent: customers tell you what to do if you listen. What’s changed is that listening has become harder. I used to speak to shopfloor teams and regional managers; now we rely more on online data or gathering consumer insights. You have to work harder for insight because we’ve lost those in-person touchpoints.

That means understanding search behaviour, conversion metrics, customer service conversations and, crucially, community feedback.

Running the US for ASOS, we saw customers searching for brands they already knew but that we didn’t stock. That insight pushed us towards localised assortments and directly influenced buying decisions.

At Wild Nutrition today, customers are openly telling us about their lives; for example, in the past 12 months we have spoken to countless customers who have started GLP-1 medication or who are looking for alternatives in their weight loss journey. That insight has shaped both product development, launching our Weight Management Support product, and the educational content and 1:1 Nutritional Therapist support we’ve put in place around it.

The channels may have changed, but the listening must remain.

Modern leadership and saying “I don’t know”

Another part of my early training I’m incredibly grateful for is learning how to ask for help. One of the biggest challenges I see in modern leadership is a lack of understanding.

There’s pressure to appear fluent in everything, especially technology. A survey showed two-thirds of UK business leaders are scared to admit when they don’t understand something. That’s dangerous. Good training gives you humility and confidence in the fundamentals; the confidence to say, “I don’t understand this yet, can you help me?”

I do this openly. I’ll ask someone more informed than me to explain something, or use tools like ChatGPT to get myself up to speed. That behaviour builds trust, creates psychological safety, and gives others permission to be honest. Some of the most uncomfortable rooms I’ve been in are full of leaders who talk a good game but don’t understand the basics. People see through that.

Another strength is knowing when to say “not yet.” I love the phrase the second mouse gets the cheese. TikTok is a good example. We’re on it as a business, but we didn’t need to be first. We’re still learning.

In SMEs especially, you don’t have the luxury of endless mistakes. Pace matters, but so does discipline. Doing fewer things well beats doing everything badly.

Our collagen product is a good example. Our customers had asked us to make a collagen product for years. We waited until the science was compelling and we could find the ingredients to make the formulation genuinely differentiated. When we launched, it was a knockout success, winning awards and gaining huge uptake from new and existing customers.

Restlessness beats reinvention

One of the best things my early M&S training instilled into me was commercial restlessness: never standing still, always being curious. That matters because trends change, selling environments change, channels change and behaviours change. If you’re curious as a consumer yourself, you’re already halfway there as a marketer.

Where businesses go wrong is mistaking curiosity for constant reinvention. New channels, platforms and social trends can be a form of catnip for marketers. Trends feel urgent. Platforms promise scale. The mistake is total replacement towards the new and shiny, instead of thoughtful evolution.

Retail has changed dramatically. A business with 200 shops in the 90s might now have 50- but those 50 still matter: to communities, to brand building and creating trust. The same applies to marketing channels.

When I worked at Boden, a digitally savvy DTC business, physical catalogues still mattered because they mattered to customers. When I went to the shaving brand Harry’s, during the explosion of Facebook and Google, the win was blending newer digital marketing techniques with more traditional channels that still influenced our target consumers.

Throughout my career, the question has always been: What do I know that still applies? Management. Brand building. Consumer insight. Marketing fundamentals. They transfer.

Today’s business landscape can feel overwhelming. Retail will always keep changing. Technology will evolve. Channels will rise and fall. But your north star remains:

• Deep and regular consumer understanding
  
• Strong fundamentals
  
• Humility in leadership
  
• Respect for what works
  
  

The leaders who win won’t be the ones chasing every new thing. They’ll be the ones grounded enough to know which basics still matter.

That’s not old-fashioned. It’s timeless.