TOTEM Times:
Insights & Trends
September is often sold as a fresh start
In business, it often simply means returning to the list: pending meetings, paused campaigns, resurfacing objectives, and calendars filling up again far too quickly. But a brand doesn’t improve by resuming activity. It improves when it regains its purpose. After summer, there’s a common temptation: to act before thinking. To publish more. To launch more. […]
Brands don’t just collaborate. They create new worlds
For years, many brands viewed each other as enemy territory. My category, my audience, my tone, my space, my market. But something is changing. We’re seeing more and more brands collaborating to appear in places they couldn’t reach on their own. Fashion with food. Beauty with beverages. Luxury with urban culture. Retail with entertainment. Technology […]
The first half of 2026 left a clear impression
AI is no longer news. It’s already integrated into how we work, search, buy, compare, produce, and make decisions. For a while, many brands viewed it as a novelty. Then as an advantage. Now another stage begins: understanding what to do with it without becoming just another brand amidst the noise. And that’s the uncomfortable […]
Every time a brand says it wants to connect with young people, something needs to be examined
Not because wanting to understand them is wrong. On the contrary. The problem arises when they are treated like a decorative tribe: an aesthetic, a tone, a list of words, a campaign with fast-paced music and brighter colors. New generations don’t need brands to seem young. They need them to stop treating them like naive […]
August has a strange way of creating distance
Some people leave. Some people return. Families reunite after months apart. Friends meet up for a few days. Conversations linger because there’s no rush. Silences also find rest. And in the midst of this slower, sunnier, more suspended month, the 8th arrives once again. At TOTEM, we celebrate it with #8Hugs. Not as a pretty […]
For a while, productivity was an advantage
Today, it’s becoming the opposite. A brand can request twenty headlines in a minute, a hundred images in an afternoon, and a complete campaign before a meeting is over. The surprising thing is no longer that something appears at all. The worrying thing is that almost everything appears with a similar level of polish. That’s […]
Vacations don’t begin when you leave
They begin with how you leave behind what you’ve built. At the end of July, many brands enter transition mode. Cycles are closed, tasks are delegated, automation is implemented, and the pace slows. Everything seems under control. But it’s precisely at this moment that a key question arises: what happens to the brand when it’s […]
The World Cup offers more than just matches. It offers identity.
For 39 days, the world did something quite extraordinary: stop, look, and feel the same thing all at once. A ball. A jersey. A flag. An anthem. A country. A promise. There wasn’t much to explain. The World Cup is understood more through the body than the mind. The 2026 World Cup has ended on […]
The 2026 World Cup already has a champion
The match ends. The tension ends. The uncertainty ends. The result is in. But something else begins: memory. Because a final doesn’t just crown a team. It enshrines a story. And this final had something especially powerful: Argentina and Spain once again placed the Spanish language at the center of the world. For the first […]
A customer allows you to generate revenue. A believer helps you grow
They seem like the same person, buying the same things, visiting the same channels, receiving the same messages. But they belong to two completely different categories, and confusing them is one of the most costly strategic mistakes an organization can make. A customer buys. They choose between alternatives, compare, and evaluate. They use reason more […]
