What 150+ Benelux marketing leaders actually think about AI.
(Spoiler: most are still fooling around.)
Everyone's talking about AI. But what's actually happening inside the boardrooms of Benelux companies?
Fightclub, together with BAM (The Belgian Association of Marketing) and Marketing Report Nederland & België, decided to stop guessing and start asking. We surveyed 150+ marketing leaders across Belgium and the Netherlands. The ones signing the cheques. The ones feeling the pressure. The ones who decide where budgets go and which tools actually get used.
The result? The State of AI in BENELUX Marketing 2026 Report. No opinions. No agency talk. Just data from the people who matter.
The numbers tell one story. The quotes tell another.
One leader put it bluntly: "We're producing more content than ever. And getting ignored more than ever."
That's the real conversation now. Not "should we use AI?" But: "How do we use it as an actual advantage?"
The data backs it up:
- 69% of marketing leaders cite lack of in-house skills as their biggest blockade
- 82% are still stuck in experimentation mode, only 8% are using AI to drive new business models
- 58% say breaking through the noise is their biggest creative challenge
AI solved volume. It created sameness. And most teams are tinkering, not transforming.
The gap between hype and reality
What keeps marketing leaders up at night? We asked. They told us four things:
- Skills and resources: Do we have the right people? The right mindset?
- AI integration and adoption: Which tools actually work? How do we move beyond testing?
- Oversaturated markets: Innovation matters more. Budgets matter less.
- Content and creativity: When everyone has the same tools, how do you stay distinctive?
These aren't hypotheticals. They're the bottlenecks slowing down growth across the BENELUX.
What winners do differently
“A.I., machine learning, agents and LLM's aren't new. They just became actionable and accessible for a broader public and therefore disruptive for a series of industries, professions and day-to-day activities. This shift is bigger than ever, more impactful than the arrival of the internet and evolving at rocket pace. Marketers, sales people, founders and administrative
helpers are all challenged to think different and act accordingly." – Dennis De Cat, CEO Fightclub
The report doesn't just diagnose problems. It points to solutions. The teams that are actually making progress share five habits:
→ Build a culture of fast movers. Don't wait for perfection. Just start.
→ Launch an experimentation process. Test something new every month. Scale what works.
→ Only work with flexible tech. Legacy tech = legacy thinking. Kill it.
→ Hire business people with tech affinity. Give me a strategist who gets AI over a channel expert who only knows their own tool.
→ Master the new baseline skills. Asset hacking. Deconstruction. Prompt engineering. These aren't nice-to-haves anymore.
Why this report exists
We didn't write this because we read about AI. We wrote it because we built ours first.
Step one: a dedicated squad. Five experts. One mission: explore, build, integrate. They're our scouts. They find what works so our clients don't have to.
Step two: we got our hands dirty. We brought Rory Flynn from New York. Not for a guest lecture. A full-week immersion. Our creative team sat with him. Our strategists. Our clients. We didn't watch. We built.
Step three: AI woven into our fabric. This is the structural shift. It's no longer a "what if." It's how we work. And it's how we help clients win.
The result? Proprietary tools like Shopfeedr (our ecom feed optimization platform), a CRO Analysis Tool, an AI Traffic Dashboard, a Content Studio that builds visual ads in a second and an AI Influencer Video Creator that turns briefs into scroll-stopping content in minutes . Not experiments. Live tools. Working for clients.
Taking the conversation beyond the report
Data should lead to action. Not just insight. So we're doing exactly that:
Fightclub Café, Antwerp – We gathered a small group of clients in our brand new Antwerp office for an exclusive walkthrough. No slides. Just conversation. Clear action plans for 2026. Over beers.
BAM Student Congress, March 17 – Our CEO Dennis De Cat took the stage in front of 1,800+ marketing students. His message? AI implementation, hands-on use cases, and what the next generation needs to know. Because supporting the market means supporting everyone in it, the leaders navigating today and the students leading tomorrow .
Milan AI Week – We're taking a select group of clients to the biggest, most advanced AI congress in the world. They go together with our own AI team. Curated. Immersive. Applied.
PACKED Podcast – Each episode comes with a hands-on framework or easy steps so you can apply learnings immediately. Not inspiration. Action.
Download the report
The State of AI in Benelux Marketing 2026 is available now for free. No registration walls. No sales calls. Just the data, the insights, and the practical takeaways that 150+ marketing leaders have already used to shape their 2026 plans.
About Fightclub Agency
Fightclub is a digital & creative agency with a motto: Outsmart. Outperform. We are the strategic partners for growth-obsessed brands, cutting through market noise and mediocre results. Our fully integrated team of 100+ experts under one roof delivers long-term growth partnerships, combining best-in-class creativity with data-driven performance.
For press inquiries, interview requests, or access to the pre-release of the "PACKED" podcast, please contact:
Lisa Marie Van Boxel
Marketing Manager BENELUX
Visit: https://fightclubagency.com
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fightclub-agency