Taking a case-by-case position: goodbye one-size-fits-all marketing

The game is underway but the outcome is uncertain. For some it even seems rigged. On the one hand, digital life powered by connected devices and performance algorithms. On the other, real life on city streets that once favoured play and are now alternative routes for cars because of navigation apps, becoming more dangerous for children and families. The numbers bear this out: in America, 15 per cent of children between 5 and 11 years old and less than 5 per cent of teenagers engage in outdoor physical activity.

Hence the petition by True Hockey, a tech brand of ice hockey equipment. The campaign wants to rethink technology in favour of local communities because it stems from the realisation that neighbourhood streets, once a space for children to play, are now shortcuts from urban traffic for the algorithms of navigation platforms. "Game On Ball" - this is the name of the campaign, Italian for "game in progress" - focuses on a street hockey ball designed to dialogue with apps by signalling the presence of playful activities and inviting traffic to be redirected towards main arteries. The testimonial is Olympic champion Natalie Spooner, a reference in Canadian hockey.

Rethinking engagement for niches increasingly complex to motivate and engage. So the brand abandons its ambition to be mass market, embracing specific audiences. On the other hand, the shrewdest companies bring tribes together, contemporary marketing guru Seth Godin has been reminding us for years. The 'one size fits all' model is broken: the brand becomes situational, focusing on segmented strategies. A communication that goes beyond the dominant model and becomes adaptive.

This is what emerges from the new snapshot taken by the European Communication Monitor, research promoted by a network involving several academic bodies and in Italia the Iulm University, presented as a preview in Il Sole 24 Ore. It is the largest continental research on strategic communication that has been active for 20 years: the data is based on surveys distributed to 300 large public and private companies in 13 countries. Values also become situational, with 63% of stakeholders choosing or boycotting a brand based on its stance on social issues. The report underlines a structural transformation: organisations no longer speak to a homogeneous audience but to aconstellation of micro-worlds - generational, cultural, values - that coexist inside and outside the company walls. This is why there is no longer a single world to evangelise, but a mosaic of complexities to decode.

"The real leap is not about adapting tone or channel to different audiences, but about the communication function becoming strategic and central, an advocate of continuous negotiation of meanings. The chief communication officer becomes a transformational leader who exerts his influence beyond communication. Four principles emerge at the basis: modular narrative coherence, internal alignment with employees, continuous social intelligence, and overcoming generational stereotypes beyond labels,' says Stefania Romenti, professor of strategic communication at Iulm University and Italy's reference for the research.