Christopher Cardoen

3 shifts every marketer needs to make in 2026. Most teams are still behind. Our team breaks it down in 30 seconds 🤠 1️⃣ SEO isn’t dead—it’s evolving. If you want to be visible in AI-driven search, it needs to be a priority. 2️⃣ Your channels can’t operate in silos anymore. Paid, social, and offline must work as one connected ecosystem. 3️⃣ Reach is vanity. Trust is everything. Authenticity is what actually drives impact today. Which shift are you already applying and which one are you still underestimating? Alexia De Brabandere Lien Van Bael Jan Sabbe Maryse van Kerkhoven

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A small Meta Ads update that’s easy to miss, but definitely worth knowing. 👀 Meta is now automatically adding the landing page of an ad as the first comment underneath the ad. Hat tip to our Digital Advertising Expert Yannah Van Durme for spotting this one. 🔎 Why is this interesting? It gives people an extra way to click through to the landing page, directly from the comments. Besides the regular CTA button, people who open the comments (to check reactions, ask questions or look for social proof) now get another direct opportunity to visit the advertiser’s website. It also makes the destination of the ad more visible before clicking. A small change, but one that could potentially influence click behaviour! Have you spotted this on your Meta ads already? #MetaAds #DigitalAdvertising #SocialMediaMarketing

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Over the past few months, I worked on the brand strategy & visual identity for Pitched. During the strategic process, one thing quickly became clear. Most supplement brands are built for the fitness industry. Pitched isn’t. Rather than competing in an overcrowded category, Pitched is developed and optimized for footballers. Not for fitness enthusiasts. From the positioning to the visual identity, every decision reflects that clear focus. We moved away from the typical “no pain, no gain” aesthetic that dominates the supplement category and created a contemporary brand with subtle references to football and the science-backed nature of the supplements. Strong brands aren’t built by trying to appeal to everyone. They’re built by making clear choices about who they’re for. And, perhaps even more importantly, who they’re not for. Pitched. Fuel for football, not fitness. A sneak peek of the branding in the video below. Full case dropping next week. ──── Branding by NDM Branding ™ Launch video by JUNE THE AGENCY (Stijn Poen - Jonathan Agba)

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5 Essential AI Tools to Outsmart the Competition Without Adding Headcount 📈 A few weeks ago, I joined Rory Flynn on Fightclub (BE)’s PACKED podcast to talk about how marketers can scale smarter with AI. We discussed tools that helped triple our output with the same small team. No outsourcing, No delays, just smarter systems that work. It still surprises me how some tools are so simple, save hours of work, yet remain unused by 90% of marketers. 😱 🎙 The Underdog’s Tech Stack: 5 AI Tools to Implement Yesterday Keep an eye on Fightclub’s or my socials for the first episode coming soon. 👀 #ai #aiautomation #generativeai

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We planned a frequency of 5. It landed at 9.17. At first glance, that looks like overexposure. But the more useful question was: where did the reach go? This was a Belgian awareness campaign split between FR and NL audiences. We generated more impressions than planned, but still missed the reach objective. Part of the explanation was audience overlap. In Belgium, FR and NL targeting doesn’t create two perfectly separate populations. Especially around Brussels, some users can fall into both audiences. So part of the delivery kept concentrating on the same people, pushing frequency up without generating the incremental reach we expected. That’s why I’m careful when I see a high frequency in a report. I don’t immediately call it creative fatigue or overexposure. I first check: - audience size - overlap - campaign duration - whether incremental reach is still growing Frequency can be the symptom. The real issue may be somewhere else in the setup. Curious how other Belgian media buyers usually handle FR/NL overlap on Meta.

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Everyone says Search is changing. But do we actually know how people search today? Over the past months, we worked with Ipsos in Belgium on a large-scale market study to understand how Belgians actually search in 2026. Not just which platforms they use, but how search behavior is really evolving: → Where do they start when looking for a product? → When do they turn to AI instead of Google? → What role do TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or marketplaces play? → How does this change depending on age, language or intent? → And how much are people already letting AI influence their decisions? We’ve now gone through the results. Some confirmed what we see every day with our clients. Others really didn’t. On October 8th, we’ll reveal the full study for the first time at The Search Shift in Brussels. But the event won’t just be about presenting data. The goal is to connect the dots between how people search and how brands need to adapt, across Google, AI, social media, marketplaces, and the next generation of agentic search. A full day with MentionBox, MentionLab and Ipsos in Belgium 📍 Skyline Brussels 📅 October 8th, 2026 🎟️ Free to attend, with limited seats To keep the audience relevant and the conversations valuable, participation is subject to confirmation. Request your seat here: the-search-shift.com Can’t wait to share the results and, more importantly, what brands can actually do with them.

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How visible are our brands in AI answers? More and more people aren't just asking a search engine anymore. They're asking ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Mode. That raises a new question for us: do our brands show up in those answers, and how? Over the past few months, we've laid the groundwork at Colruyt Group to measure exactly that. Together with Rankshift and our SEO and GEO partner Ants, we've set it up for several of our brands. What I learned along the way: 🔹 Measuring starts with the right questions. Most of the work isn't in the tool, but in building realistic questions that customers actually ask. That takes time and close alignment with each brand. 🔹 Structure makes or breaks your measurement. Spread your questions across too many small themes and you won't have enough questions per theme to draw reliable conclusions. A limited number of clear themes works better. 🔹 Keep branded questions separate. Questions that already mention your own brand paint a different picture than open questions. Keeping them apart keeps the measurement fair. 🔹 Two languages, two different worlds. A translated question isn't always the question a French-speaking customer would actually ask. So treat each language as a separate study, with its own questions. 🔹 It's a team effort. Brands, our SEO and GEO partner, IT and Rankshift all had to be on board. It takes time, but it builds a solid foundation. Thanks to the Rankshift and Ants teams for the great collaboration. Looking forward to building on this. How are you approaching AI visibility? Curious to hear how other companies are tackling this. #GEO #AIVisibility #SEO #ColruytGroup

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During my Christmas break I dove a bit more into vibe coding: building real websites or apps using nothing more than an AI chat interface. Think of it as explaining to a computer what you want, instead of hiring a developer to code it for you. I built three platforms in React.js for different clients React.js is a technology normally used by professional developers: https://bostile.be https://equi-p.be https://noevo.pro Each site is: built with React.js fully GDPR compliant, safe, including cookie-safe tracking optimized for SEO, performance and fast loading What’s interesting: projects like these usually require a web developer or agency and would cost significant amount of time and money. Typical market price for this kind of work sits around €5K–€40K, depending on project scope, SEO, tracking and performance optimization. This shows that AI is more than just a tool to “help.” It’s an execution layer. At a fraction of the usual cost, and in language a digital savvy marketer like you and I can understand.

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Still not convinced GEO really works? You’re not alone.   Many brands are curious, but also cautious. And honestly, who could blame them?   Every agency uses a different method. Every platform claims to have “the right” approach. And the landscape moves so fast that it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s noise. This uncertainty doesn’t mean GEO is unreliable... it just means the market is still young.   But here’s the thing: GEO does work: when it’s done right! And next week, we’re proving it with a real case.   🔥 D-Carbonize x Semactic - SEO & GEO Software: A GEO strategy that delivers - inside ChatGPT. Together with 🌍Frederic John (COO D-Carbonize), our co-founder Kevin Coppens will explain: How we built a GEO strategy from scratch Which signals conversational AI actually listens to How a brand gets cited, understood and surfaced inside ChatGPT And why D-Carbonize became a reference use case for GEO adoption No hype. No vague concepts. A concrete example with the client on stage.   If you want clarity on what really works in GEO, you’ll want to be there. 📅 3 December – 18:00 📍 Cercle du Lac, Louvain-la-Neuve 🎟️ Free registration: https://lnkd.in/etDsrE-z   A big thank you to invest.bw for empowering the ecosystem and giving space to tomorrow’s visibility models.   Want to understand what actually works in GEO? Join us.

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