Europe is not immune to this year’s global turbulence, from navigating renewed trade uncertainty with the United States and China to battling stagnating economies in major European markets as well as declining economic and consumer sentiment indices across Europe. This has resulted in volatility and uncertainty affecting not only companies but also consumers, whose desire for stability and belonging draws them to strong, reliable brands that drive trust and affiliation. 1 At the same time, companies are looking to boost their marketing effectiveness capabilities to stay competitive and improve their performance. Our report distills the landscape into three themes that show how European CMOs are refitting enduring priorities for today: Be trusted puts brand strength at the center when conditions are choppy: Four of the top ten topics in this theme focus on earning and keeping trust, and the playbook is shifting towards substance over spin with authentic proof points, useful content, and interactive formats that build community and two-way dialogue. Be effective reflects performance pressure even as marketing proves resilient and grows its relative investment: Five of the top ten priorities concern improving performance. Leaders are raising the bar on proving ROI, with sharper attribution, clearer incrementality, and faster test-and-learn cycles that demonstrate contribution to growth for the board and embed continuous improvement across the funnel. Be bold calls for faster adoption of gen AI and agents. Only 6 percent of European marketing leaders rate their company’s gen AI maturity as high, yet these front-runners already capture efficiency gains above 20 percent, which they bank or reinvest in growth. Despite this, most executives rank gen AI among the last on their agendas. We see this as a striking undervaluation of the power of gen AI. If the gap between the demonstrated power of gen AI and executives’ opinion of it persists, European brands risk losing near-term efficiency gains and the long-term edge that comes from new marketing concepts and ways of working. Gen AI is among the most important levers for competitiveness, and marketers need to act with urgency by proving impact through real use cases, scaling what works, and rewiring marketing for the AI era before global peers widen the gap. Exhibit 1 ranks the full list of 20 marketing topics cited as most important by Europe’s marketing executives as they navigate this turbulent market (later in this report, Exhibit 2 sheds light on the need to act by topic, setting these priorities into perspective. For more on our research, see sidebar, “About our research” on page 8). 1 “An update on European consumer sentiment: Cautious, but gearing up for the holidays,” McKinsey, September 5, 2025. Inside the minds of Europe’s marketing executives: Three themes 5 Past forward: The modern rethinking of marketing’s core