The end of static strategy: towards a system of rapid response and cultural relevance.

How do you go from studying Law to leading digital strategies in the age of AI? For Marina Hernández, Head of Strategy & Research at Good Rebels, the answer lies in curiosity. Eight years at the agency go a long way, and in her case, they’ve helped her understand the digital business from every angle: from Content Creator to leading the Social & Engagement area for two years, to building a truly exceptional cross-functional perspective.

Her experience across such diverse areas, from pure content to the numbers behind paid media, now allows her to navigate today’s chaos with a competitive advantage: the ability to connect dots others don’t see. In this interview, we sit down with her to unpack the present and understand why, in times of uncertainty, strategy is more essential than ever.

Marina shares her perspective on the role of the strategist today, how new tools are reshaping the discipline, and the key principles she believes brands need not only to survive, but to stand out.

Q: What trends and consumption habits are shaping today’s landscape?

A: Not long ago, I came across the report The META Trending Trends: 02026 by Matt Klein, which set out to analyse, based on various trend studies, what the main macro trends are today. The conclusion was that the words that came up most often were “chaos” and “uncertainty”. Beyond whether that can be considered a trend in itself, it highlights how quickly trends are evolving. And that makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish which ones truly matter and which don’t.

We often say that behind all those trends that appear and disappear day by day, there must be larger forces explaining them. And that’s exactly what we aimed to reflect in our Social Trends report. In this document, we’ve identified, within broader cultural macro trends, those we believe are here to stay.

For me, one of the most relevant macro trends is linked to the economic context we’re living in. Today, the way each person perceives their own financial situation can be very different from what is actually happening in the wider economy. In other words, personal perception outweighs macroeconomic data.

There’s also an important shift in how we perceive culture. I feel that digital marketing has become somewhat sterilised; it has grown overly scientific. And now it’s the users themselves who are starting to demand cultural relevance again.

Another key trend is oversaturation: users are exposed to too many digital touchpoints and are becoming increasingly aware of it.

Q:  How can brands survive the technological and social shift we’re living through?

Amid all the noise, brands need us to identify what truly lasts, the elements reflected in macro trends. They also need teams that are capable of responding in real time to what’s happening. It’s not just about spotting trends at a specific moment, like during a strategic review, but about having the foresight within the team to say: “this is something my brand can use and it can work.”

Q: How would you define the role of AI for strategy experts? How do you choose your tech stack in a context of chaos, uncertainty and constant change?

On this topic, many colleagues working in strategy talk about AI potentially replacing strategists, but I couldn’t disagree more. Ultimately, what AI allows us to do is go deeper, to reach places we simply couldn’t access before.

We can now interview far more people and, from that often dense information, extract insights and improve how we visualise data.

Rather than finding a single tool that solves everything, especially when there seems to be a new “tool of the moment” every week, the key is understanding how to combine different AI tools. This allows us to use them for distinct purposes: some to build mental maps of complex structures, others to automate processes and extract information or news, and others to facilitate client workshops and explore possible scenarios.

With AI, we can iterate and explore different scenarios, even simulate new possibilities, enabling a much more in-depth analysis. Overall, it’s a technology that is transforming how we approach strategy, and in my view, making the process not only more effective, but also more engaging and, ultimately, more enjoyable, while allowing us to go much further.

Q: Brand or performance? Because this debate never seems to die.

For me, the brand vs performance debate was settled ten years ago with the well-known paper The Long and the Short of It (Les Binet & Peter Field, 2012). It’s clear that we need both. However, the debate is likely to resurface due to the acceleration of AI and the transformation in how we experience the internet. We’re moving towards a zero-click environment, where traditional conversion metrics will no longer hold, simply because users will be able to purchase without following the usual journey.

Beyond this, I believe the debate overlooks a third variable: the tangible brand experience. In line with the social detox trend, users now seek physical elements, whether that’s the in-store experience, contact with the product, or a sense of community beyond the screen. And while this happens in the analogue world, it still leaves a lasting imprint in the digital one.

For us, it’s about ensuring that brand, performance and brand experience are integrated within the strategy.

Q: How can we understand the buyer, and what’s the best way to analyse them for strategy? Why do people talk about the “death of the buyer persona”?

We’ve been saying for years that the funnel is dead. Around five years ago, Google published a paper introducing the concept of the messy middle. Instead of viewing the consumer journey as a funnel, it proposed understanding it as a much more fluid brand exploration process, almost like an infinite loop, where you don’t know exactly at which point the user will convert.

And, given how algorithms and platforms operate today, this way of understanding the journey increasingly reflects reality.

You’re no longer guiding users through clearly defined stages. Instead, you accompany their process, and when the user is ready, they may become a brand advocate, or simply remain an observer. 

This shift has also accelerated because Gen Z naturally approaches the purchase journey this way. Having grown up in a digital-first environment, this behaviour feels intuitive to them.

As for the buyer persona, I believe that rather than defining who this person is purely from a socio-demographic perspective, we need to incorporate variables related to their digital behaviour and their perception of culture.

We need to go deeper and understand that the buyer persona no longer behaves in a static way. As a result, our digital systems should not aim to reach them through a single approach. Instead, the goal is to build an ecosystem where, at different moments, we can engage users throughout their exploration and evaluation process, guiding them towards conversion.

Q: Is the annual strategic plan dead?

We’re in a moment where LinkedIn is filled with conversations around questions like: what’s new? and what’s coming next? This ultimately leads to an overload of information about what we should be doing and what the next strategic move for a brand should be.

In that context, it’s only natural that producing a single strategic document once a year is no longer enough, as it quickly becomes outdated. Moreover, when strategy is framed as an annual document, it also becomes harder to execute it effectively in day-to-day operations.

For us, it’s essential that strategic thinking and execution go hand in hand. And to achieve this, we need to build an ecosystem where strategic insights can emerge at any point throughout the year. In other words, whenever we detect a relevant signal for the business, we should be able to respond in real time, activate quickly, and have teams ready to execute when that signal appears.

It’s not that the January strategy has died as such — because it’s always better to have a strategy in January than not to have one at all — . But we believe that the companies of the future, the ones truly capable of reacting, will be those that manage to build a strategic operating system with rapid response capabilities.

Q: If you had a microphone to share one message with strategy experts around the world, what would you say?

I’d tell them to look more closely at culture, at everyday life and at people, how they communicate, how they speak and how they perceive things beyond macro data and the broad trends we tend to focus on within the industry.

At Good Rebels, since much of our history is rooted in social media, we have a close connection to this. Our methodology has evolved through daily contact, ensuring that strategies stay grounded in real people and real life, rather than focusing on abstract themes that sit too far above the consumer.