Being seen is no longer enough to be chosen
The offer and the messages increase faster than the available attention. Alternatives are accessible, cycles shorten and preference ceases to be an acquired one.
More offers and messages compete for limited attention: preference must be constantly regained.
The hypercompetition equation
Hypercompetition is not limited to the fact that consumers change brands more often, it is the result of three multiplications.
- 01SupplyMore brands, products and references share the same demand.
- 02MessagesMore content and solicitations share the same time.
- 03AttentionA resource that does not increase.
Consequence: Substitutability increases, and preference must be constantly regained.
Substitutability has become the starting point
In the 2025 edition of Meaningful Brands, Havas estimates that 78% of the brands studied could disappear without consumers' concern.
Havas · Meaningful Brands · 2025 · brands studied within the framework of the Meaningful Brands Framework — View source
The purchasing behaviour confirms this accessibility of alternatives: 58% of the consumers surveyed say that national or brand-distributive status does not matter to them, and 68% see distributor-brands as good alternatives to major brands.
NielsenIQ · Private label and branded product growth · 2025 · consumers surveyed — View source
Historical size also provides less protection than before. Between 2022 and 2025 in the United States, established niche brands gained 1.5 percentage points of market share, while large and medium-sized national brands lost 2.1 points.
NielsenIQ · AI is resetting the rules of growth in CPG · 2026 · US consumer goods market — View source
These data do not mean that the brand has lost any importance. Instead, they show that preference is no longer acquired: when a brand no longer produces enough difference or relevance, alternatives are easily accessible. The conclusion to be drawn from this is clear — the status of a national trade brand is no longer sufficient protection against substitution.
More offers compete for the same attention
McKinsey documents the case of a manufacturer whose number of references has increased by 66% over three years, while average sales per reference decreased by 40%. This is a documented case, not a market average.
McKinsey · Simpler is sometimes better: managing complexity in consumer goods · 2024 · case of a manufacturer documented by McKinsey — View source
On the exhibition side, Dentsu estimates that an individual can be exposed to more than 4,000 commercials per day, spread over a multitude of platforms and screens.
Dentsu · The attention economy · 2024 · estimate — View source
The mechanism is arithmetic: the denominator — time and attention available — does not grow, while the numerator increases on both sides, offers and messages.
Competitive speed becomes a requirement
At the same time, NielsenIQ observes two phenomena which must not be linked by a causality which no data establish: an acceleration of assortment renewal cycles in some large retailers, now of the order of 12 weeks, and a persistent difficulty of the firms studied to transform innovation into growth — only 9% have succeeded.
NielsenIQ · Strategies behind 2025's top performing innovations · 2025 · retailers and companies studied by NielsenIQ — View source
The pressure is not simply to launch more, but to quickly detect relevant opportunities and learn more about their performance.
What this means for marketing leaders
In an environment where attention is limited and alternatives abundant, performance increasingly depends on the ability to detect relevant contexts, quickly adapt the offer and message, measure the response and reinject this learning into subsequent activations.
If preference is to be constantly regained, personalization becomes a logical response.
- 01Hypercompetition and attention
- 02Personalization and customer experience
- 03Omnichannel customer journey
- 04Polarisation of performance
- 05AI at scale