Meta’s latest results point to a company not just profiting from AI, but building the foundations of an interconnected world. While short-term gains are impressive, revenue up 26% year-on-year to roughly $51bn (£39bn), powered by AI-enhanced ad placements and engagement across Facebook and Instagram, the real story lies in where Meta is heading next.
The company is doubling down on the infrastructure needed to merge our social, immersive and physical realities: investing heavily in data centres, custom chips and AI-powered wearables like the Ray-Ban Display and neural wristbands. This isn’t just a reinvestment story, it’s a signal of intent. Meta, alongside Apple, OpenAI and Google, is racing to build ecosystems that connect how we communicate, create and experience the world.
In this new phase, brands won’t live within channels or categories; they’ll exist across networks of interaction, spanning digital platforms, physical interfaces and AI-driven experiences. Yet, even in this new era, the enduring principles of design-thinking frameworks still hold true; they simply demand fresh interrogation and adaptation to fit a new kind of operating model. The cycle must mirror how people now move through connected environments – fluidly, emotionally and across worlds.
Design for a world that doesn’t sit still
If the future belongs to interconnected worlds, discovery is where it begins. Not just observing change, but anticipating it. It’s about exploring how people already move between social, immersive and physical spaces and uncovering where your brand can add meaning to those journeys.
Before chasing the next immersive partnership or AI-driven product, brands need to look both outward and inward. Outward, to understand the shifting patterns of behaviour, culture and technology that shape how people connect. Inward, to see how their identities perform across evolving environments, from screens and feeds to wearables and spatial interfaces.
As wearables and immersive platforms expand, brand identity can no longer be purely visual; it must become multi-sensory, built from sound, motion and touch as much as from colour and typography. Even the most familiar assets need fresh interrogation: how does a logo move, sound or feel when experienced through AR glasses or a neural wristband?
These may sound like incremental design questions, but they’re structural ones.
Discovery is the process of mapping the new frontiers of connection, revealing not only where a brand already lives, but where it could live next. It’s about building the intelligence, empathy and foresight that will anchor everything that follows.
Emotion is the new interface
Once we know where the brand might live, the next challenge is emotional coherence, ensuring the brand feels alive and connected wherever it appears. For brands to exist meaningfully in people’s minds and build distinctive assets, they must create positive emotional connections. These are what form memory structures, drive recall and build preference, the fundamentals that power long-term growth.
Immersive and interconnected environments will multiply the ways brands can connect. With experiences that engage multiple senses at once, the opportunity to build deeper brand equity has never been greater. But so has the risk. Poorly designed experiences can just as easily feel disjointed, intrusive or inauthentic, breaking the very connections they aim to strengthen.
Here, definition becomes a discipline of coherence, ensuring every gesture, sound or interaction feels emotionally consistent.
Building living systems
Development is where definition comes alive, where meaning takes form through movement, sound, texture and interaction. It’s the stage where every sense plays a part, as visual, verbal, sonic, haptic and even olfactory cues come together into a living identity system. One that evolves, learns and moves with people.
This is where brand behavior takes shape: the double tap of your index finger and thumb to click, the swipe of a hand to move things left or right, the buzz and vibration sequence of a wristband, the sound that rings when you complete a task, the squeeze of a haptic jacket or even the release of a scent in a key moment. These are not incidental details but extensions of a brand’s identity, made tangible through experience.
Getting these foundations right is what determines whether a brand not only feels at home in the next generation of connected experiences, but also stands out as a native innovator within them. When a brand truly understands how to act and express itself across sensory and interactive dimensions, it doesn’t just keep pace but helps shape the culture and language of new environments.
Make connection the operating system
Once those living systems are in motion, the focus shifts to delivery, keeping them in a constant state of perpetual beta. The connected world will never stand still and neither can brands. Continuous testing, iteration, and measurement – not just of conversion, but of emotional resonance – will be key to building ecosystems that learn, evolve and strengthen over time.
As digital, physical, and immersive spaces continue to merge, the brands that lead won’t just adapt, they’ll design for connection and resonance. Building for this new era isn’t about chasing every new technology; it’s about creating the connective tissue that allows a brand’s meaning, emotion and identity to travel seamlessly across them.
Ultimately, success for businesses in this new era lies not in mastering every platform, but in designing brand ecosystems that move with people and that are fluid, coherent and human at every touchpoint. Connection isn’t just the outcome anymore; it’s the operating system.
Tom Gilbert is group executive creative director at Design Bridge and Partners, a global brand-design agency
Meta’s latest results point to a company not just profiting from AI, but building the foundations of an interconnected world. While short-term gains are impressive, revenue up 26% year-on-year to roughly $51bn (£39bn), powered by AI-enhanced ad placements and engagement across Facebook and Instagram, the real story lies in where Meta is heading next.
The company is doubling down on the infrastructure needed to merge our social, immersive and physical realities: investing heavily in data centres, custom chips and AI-powered wearables like the Ray-Ban Display and neural wristbands. This isn’t just a reinvestment story, it’s a signal of intent. Meta, alongside Apple, OpenAI and Google, is racing to build ecosystems that connect how we communicate, create and experience the world.
In this new phase, brands won’t live within channels or categories; they’ll exist across networks of interaction, spanning digital platforms, physical interfaces and AI-driven experiences. Yet, even in this new era, the enduring principles of design-thinking frameworks still hold true; they simply demand fresh interrogation and adaptation to fit a new kind of operating model. The cycle must mirror how people now move through connected environments – fluidly, emotionally and across worlds.
