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Web Summit 2025 insights: human-centred marketing
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Web Summit 2025: the takeaways I'm bringing back to Upscale
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Communication is your advantage
Authenticity isn't a trend
Balancing AI with humanity
Community is the way forward
Retention beats acquisition
Creativity is shifting from novelty to taste
Brand = behaviour, not campaigns
The words that ruled Web Summit 2025
Final reflections
AI may help you move faster, but that won’t matter if you forget the three words that actually make your brand stand out: authenticity, clarity, and connection.
Walking through Web Summit Lisbon 2025 felt like stepping into the future at full speed. More than 71,000 people, 869 speakers, 2,725 start-ups (40% women-founded), and enough walking to break all step records (mine: over 50,000 steps in three days).
I was invited to the summit as part of the Women in Tech program and was joined by Rita Gil, Senior Project Manager at Brew Digital, also part of The Adaptavist Group. Together, we spent four full-on days in conversations about brand, marketing, AI, creativity, leadership, and culture. Most of our time was at the Marketing Summit and Centre Stage sessions hearing from leaders at Adidas, Hootsuite, McLaren, IBM, Meta, and more.
Of course, like anything in life, not everything goes to plan. My unexpected twist this year was finding out my daughter had hurt her head at home while I was at the event. A reminder that while tech races ahead, juggling home and work life is still unpredictable and human.
Turns out, that theme set the backdrop for Web Summit this year. Across all sessions and talks, one message stood out: the future belongs to brands that stay human, even as technology gets smarter.
So, what does that actually look like in your day-to-day work? Here are the highlights that I'm taking back into my work at Upscale:
Clear communication is your competitive advantage
Across the marketing sessions, one point kept coming up: everyone is drowning in data, and very few people know how to make sense of it.
With AI accelerating content creation and decision-making, the volume is only going in one direction. But what people actually need is clarity: stories and messages that help them understand, make decisions, and move forward.
For B2B brands, this means:
- Focusing on outcomes first, features second.
- Mapping clearer journeys, calmer UX design, more confident messaging.
- Creating content that helps teams feel in control.
Clarity cuts through noise. And when it comes to getting work done productivity, that's everything.
At Upscale, we focus on building apps that help teams cut through complexity and feel more in control of their everyday work platforms like Atlassian and monday.com.
Authenticity isn't a fleeting trend: your future depends on it
I lost count of how many times 'authenticity' was mentioned across the three day event. It isn't about being perfect or polished. Real authenticity is about being imperfectly human and honest. That's particularly important for today’s leaders.
Multiple speakers reinforced that:
- People trust humans, not faceless companies.
- Team members look to leaders for clarity on what’s going on.
- There’s no 'internal' or 'external' anymore. It’s all one message.
- Leaders showing up on social is now an expected behaviour.
For B2B decision-makers (including Gen Z), seeing leaders show up in public builds trust, and all modern marketing is built on trust.
AI is now the infrastructure, but humanity is the differentiation
Sessions from Adidas, Airbnb, Hootsuite, Visa, McLaren, and WIRED all echoed the same idea: AI will make everything faster. Humanity will make everything matter.
AI is already used by consumers in highly personal ways: therapy-like chats, dating advice, personal documentation. People are not afraid of the tech itself but they fear the human’s role slipping away in its wake.
For brands, this means:
- Using AI as an assistant, not a replacement.
- Investing in context, judgement, taste, and nuance.
- Keeping empathy high.
- Showing the human thinking behind decisions.
AI creates speed, but people create the value. The question for your organisation isn't 'should we use AI?' but 'how do we make sure our human point of view is always present, even if we use AI in our workflows?'
Community is becoming the new strategy
One unexpected theme was the 'loneliness epidemic' in the workplace. It's affecting all generations, driven by digital overwhelm, fewer in-person interactions, and general fatigue.
People are looking for connection, not just more content.
Brands that focus on building a sense of belonging, even in small ways, will win through:
- User communities.
- Shared learning.
- Education-led touchpoints.
- Co-creation.
- Events, webinars, and conversation spaces.
Community isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's becoming a retention engine.
Retention beats acquisition, but it gets ignore
This was one of the clearest data realities presented across multiple sessions:
- Customer acquisition cost has increased 60–70% over the past five years.
- Brands still invest 85% of spend on acquisition.
- Yet 60–70% of first-time customers never return (in some markets).
As one speaker put it: 'Brands obsess over the first date and forget the relationship.'
The most successful companies now:
- Invest in post-purchase value.
- Build lifecycle content.
- Grow customer lifetime value, not just install numbers.
- Create ongoing 'value moments'.
- Develop owned channels and communities.
For SaaS companies, this means you need to focus on activation, retention, and building long-term value as these things will outpace install volume as the strongest drivers of healthy growth.
Taste is your new creative differentiator
A big theme from creative leaders was the rise of 'taste' (human judgement and cultural sensitivity) as the new creative differentiator.
Why? Because AI can generate endless ideas, but not the right idea.
This means:
- Craft matters more than ever.
- Emotional resonance beats volume.
- Design must feel human, not automated.
- Simplicity, clarity, and warmth outperform complexity.
If you've ever scrolled past an AI-generated paragraph of text and something felt slightly off, even if it was technically accurate, you've felt the gap that a lack of taste leaves.
In productivity and work design, the opportunity is huge: products that feel calm, helpful, and human will stand out.
Brand is behaviour, not campaigns
A core message from the leadership and brand resilience sessions: 'brand' isn't what you say. It's how you show up.
It's how you act, how you lead, and how consistent you are when nobody is watching.
In a world where everything can be screenshotted, shared, clipped, or surfaced by an LLM:
- Reputation becomes financial capital.
- Consistency becomes credibility.
- Culture becomes strategy.
- Actions become brand building.
For me, this reinforced the importance of brand governance, internal alignment, and leadership clarity. A human brand starts inside the organisation before it ever reaches customers.
The words that ruled Web Summit 2025
Across three and a half days, the same words kept popping up in every session and conversation:
- Authenticity.
- Connection.
- Community.
- Personal brand.
- Storytelling.
- AI.
No matter the industry, the message was the same: people want meaning, clarity, and brands that feel real.
Final reflections
Web Summit 2025 was fast, loud, inspiring, and challenging. But, underneath the noise, the message was clear for brands:
Be human. Be clear. Be connected. Be brave.
Technology will get faster. AI will get smarter. Platforms will keep changing.
The brands that will win will continue to be the ones that help people feel something.The future will reward leaders that make things easier, clearer, more human, and more connected.
As someone leading brand and communications in a SaaS world that's evolving and accelerating every day, this was a useful reminder that technology is only ever a tool. What people respond to, what they remember and trust, is the feeling a brand leaves them with.
And that's exactly where I'm taking these insights next: into how we shape our brand, our products, and every conversation with our customers.
(Happy ending: for those wondering, my daughter is absolutely fine now, and has already forgotten the whole thing, unlike her mother! 😉)
Written by
Brand, Commercial & Comms Marketing Team Lead
Marta, our Brand, Marketing, and Communications Leader, is passionate about elevating our brand and driving customer-focused strategies. With vast experience across B2B and B2C industries, she crafts impactful campaigns that connect Upscale with its audiences and deliver meaningful, lasting results.
Upscale