The Future of Marketing May Be Less Digital Than We Think
FLO100 Founder Simba Wakatama on Why In-Person Experiences Are Becoming the New Trust Engine in Marketing
If your company is relying on video content to build trust, there’s bad news ahead. The future of marketing may actually be less digital, and more physical.
AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora have made it effortless to produce hyper-realistic videos at scale. But that same progress is quietly eroding the foundation of digital trust. When anything can be faked, everything is questioned. And in a world where the best content often looks the least real, trust becomes the ultimate casualty.
According to Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer, only 32% of North Americans say they trust AI-generated content. Deloitte’s 2024 survey found that 68% of consumers fear AI content could deceive them, while nearly 60% can’t tell whether what they’re seeing was made by a human or a machine. In Canada, 40% of consumers under 35 already say they don’t trust online ads. Digital efficiency has scaled reach, but not belief.
THE BUSINESS OF DISTRUST
Marketers haven’t ignored the problem; they’ve tried to spend their way out of it. Global digital ad budgets have ballooned, yet performance keeps slipping. WARC’s 2025 outlook shows ad spend rising, but engagement falling across nearly every channel. And when only 32% of audiences trust AI-generated content, the return on that spend is destined to shrink.
Consumers are skeptical and increasingly resistant to digital persuasion. Mintel Canada’s 2024 report found widespread ad fatigue, and that fatigue is about to turn into avoidance as AI floods every feed.
More money. Less belief. As generative AI accelerates, the very efficiency that once fueled digital marketing may become the thing that destroys its credibility.
THE RETURN TO THE ROOM
“I want to propose an unlikely alternative,” says Simba Wakatama, Founder of FLO100. “Maybe the future of marketing isn’t more digital. Maybe it’s more physical.”
While digital budgets keep climbing, the most effective brands are quietly moving in the opposite direction, back into real rooms with real people. Bizzabo’s 2025 State of Events Report found that 66% of organizers plan to host more in-person experiences this year, and 80% say those events are critical to success.
The reason is simple: trust happens face-to-face. According to Freeman’s Future of Events study, 77% of consumers say their trust in a brand increases after a live experience, and 80% view in-person events as the most trustworthy source of information.
When the right people are in the room (decision-makers, clients, and partners) conversations replace clicks, credibility replaces impressions, and deals that once took months close in days.
THE FRAMEWORK: AN IN-PERSON-FIRST DIGITAL STRATEGY
At this point, it’s tempting to think the solution is to abandon digital altogether. But that’s not quite it.
“The real future belongs to those who master an in-person-first digital strategy,” says Wakatama. “That’s where physical experiences build trust, and digital channels amplify it.”
At FLO100, that strategy is built around a framework called C.C.C.D.A.: Curate, Capture, Close, Distribute, Amplify — an operating system that turns one event into an always-on marketing engine.
Curate the room with precision: your ICP and the people who influence them. It’s not about headcount; it’s about gravity.
Capture authentic moments and unique insights, not staged soundbites, that become your most credible short-form and written content.
Close while trust is highest; make it easy to book follow-up meetings while guests are still in the room.
Distribute within 48 hours, share the content back with attendees, and use your sales team to deliver it as a soft, organic follow-up.
Amplify is the powerhouse. When your champions share content for you, you’re A/B-testing what resonates before spending a single dollar on ads. Those learnings guide paid campaigns, fuel SEO with context-rich content, and can even be boosted organically for effortless reach.
“In this model,” Wakatama explains, “events don’t compete with digital; they feed it. Authenticity becomes the algorithm.”
THE FUTURE OF MARKETING
The future of digital might be a little more physical than we expected. After years of optimizing funnels and automating touchpoints, marketers are realizing that scale without sincerity doesn’t convert. The next wave of growth won’t come from louder campaigns; it’ll come from smarter ones, built on real human connection.
Wakatama has spent years designing experiences for some of the world’s leading brands; Google Cloud, Apple, Sony Music, Cisco, CDW, and Airwallex. Experiences that proved while technology can create reach, only people create belief.
That understanding became the foundation for FLO100, a Toronto-based firm helping companies engineer experiences that drive measurable deal flow. FLO100 finds and brings ideal audiences into roundtables and experiences that turn conversations into closes, while capturing those moments for repurposing across content, SEO, and storytelling.
“Because when campaigns begin with genuine connection, every digital dollar that follows performs better,” Wakatama says. “The future isn’t digital or physical. It’s human, measurable, and built on trust.”
ABOUT FLO100
Flo100 is a Toronto-based partnerships and experiences firm that engineers curated rooms for brands, bringing the right executives, founders, and operators together to create measurable outcomes. We design and run executive roundtables and experiences, powered by Flo100 OS, our audience intelligence and outcomes platform that tracks room composition, attendance, and ROI through follow-on meetings and pipeline momentum, turning one great room into repeatable deal flow.
Media Contact:
Simba Wakatama, Founder, FLO100
simba@flo100.com
flo100.com