The End of Disposable Marketing

For decades, advertising followed a predictable cycle: spend big on a hero campaign, blast it across TV, print, and digital for a few months, then sweep it into the archives. New quarter, new campaign.

But in today’s media landscape, where audiences fragment across TikTok, YouTube Shorts, connected TV, and streaming platforms, that old rhythm is faltering. Marketers say they need not just more content, but smarter content.

Enter the rise of “evergreening.”

Rather than retiring assets after a single run, brands are finding ways to continuously adapt, refresh, and repurpose their content, stretching both creative and budget further. At the center of this shift are digital asset management (DAM) systems and AI-driven adaptation tools that promise to make every piece of creative live many lives.

The Case for Evergreening

It’s not sustainable to keep producing content from scratch, marketing teams are expected to show up in every channel, in every format, and often with personalized messaging. Evergreening ensures you can do that without burning out budgets or teams.

Instead of cutting multiple versions of an ad in advance, evergreening systems allow brands to generate new variations as needs arise. A holiday ad can be retooled for spring. A single video can spawn dozens of versions, each with different calls-to-action or localized messaging.

For a fast-fashion brand like H&M, which adapts more than 100,000 videos annually, the efficiencies are dramatic. The cost savings are significant, but more importantly it means you can be responsive, you’re not waiting weeks for a new cut and you can go live in hours.

The benefits of this approach are financial, operational, and environmental.

·       Financial: By eliminating unnecessary reshoots, brands save millions in production costs.

·       Operational: Marketing teams gain agility, producing new campaign versions in hours instead of weeks.

·       Environmental: Fewer shoots mean lower carbon emissions, a growing priority for brands under scrutiny from consumers and regulators.

It’s a sustainability play as much as a cost play, extending the life of one shoot across multiple markets and seasons cuts waste dramatically.

Technology at the Core

Much of the innovation is happening at the software layer. Orb Group’s Orb1 platform integrates DAM with production workflows, enabling marketers to search, retrieve, and adapt content quickly. Pushing into adaptive content management, combining AI translation, synthetic voiceover, and automated editing to speed up what once took weeks of post-production.

The result: a new kind of content lifecycle where the master asset isn’t the end product, it’s the beginning. It’s about creating modular content from the start, if you shoot once but plan for 20 different uses, you can keep refreshing without diluting the brand.

Orb in Action

Polestar

For Polestar, Orb managed both production and ongoing evolution of the luxury campaign “Polestar Portraits.” Beyond creating premium films that resonated globally, Orb built a system to keep the content alive: voiceovers, copy, and visuals could be updated for new audiences, regions, or seasonal messaging, all without starting from scratch. The campaign remains relevant months after launch, demonstrating how high-end storytelling can be evergreen.

H&M

Fashion giant H&M relies on Orb to maintain one of the most complex content ecosystems in retail. Using Orb’s platform, more than 100,000 campaign videos are continuously refreshed each year: calls-to-action are swapped, seasonal messages updated, and formats adapted for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and connected TV. By reusing and updating existing content rather than reshooting, H&M maximizes the life and value of every asset.

Global Broadcaster

A public broadcaster partnered with Orb to future-proof its content distribution. Systems were developed to allow live programming and long-form content to be updated and repurposed for new digital formats, extending reach and cutting costs. Rather than a single broadcast, content can evolve over time, remaining useful and engaging long after its original airing.

These examples illustrate a shift in marketing philosophy: content is no longer disposable. When produced and managed with the right systems, it becomes evergreen, an asset that continues to deliver value across channels, markets, and time.

The Sustainability Angle

Beyond budgets, brands are discovering an environmental case for evergreening. Traditional production involves frequent travel, large crews, and energy-intensive shoots. Fewer reshoots mean a lighter carbon footprint.

It’s a sustainability play as much as a cost play - if you can extend the life of one shoot across seasons, you’ve just cut down emissions dramatically.

This resonates especially with younger audiences, who are quick to call out perceived waste. Automakers, apparel brands, and consumer goods companies alike are now weaving sustainability metrics into their marketing operations.

Shifting Roles for Creative Teams

But this new approach doesn’t come without growing pains. In-house marketing teams, suddenly empowered with tools that once required agencies or post-production houses, are navigating a cultural shift.

You used to need a full production team for every change, now marketing managers are changing CTAs themselves in the platform. It saves money, but it also changes expectations. Teams need new skill sets.

Agencies, too, are adapting. Some fear being cut out of the process; others see opportunity in offering strategy and creative direction while letting clients handle tactical adaptations.

What’s Next: AI as the Engine, Humans at the Helm

Industry observers predict AI will deepen this transformation. Already, tools can automatically adjust aspect ratios, translate voiceovers, and generate alternate scripts. In the near future, AI may propose variations proactively, analyzing campaign performance and suggesting new edits tailored to different audiences. The next leap is predictive adaptation, not just reusing content, but having AI tell you which version to create before you even brief the team.

But even as the technology accelerates, marketers caution that machines can only take campaigns so far. Evergreen content may be engineered by algorithms, but it still needs the spark of human imagination, the cultural intuition to know when a message resonates, the creative judgment to decide when an asset has run its course, and the ethical oversight to ensure brand trust isn’t compromised by automation.

The Future of Evergreen Campaigns

Whether it’s a global automaker or a boutique ice cream brand, the message is the same: campaigns are no longer disposable. Content is an asset and one that must keep working harder, longer, and smarter. Industry analysts predict that more companies will move toward modular, evergreen content strategies over the next five years, particularly as AI-driven editing tools become more sophisticated.

The winners will be the brands that balance scale with sensibility, investing in the technology that extends the life of creative assets while preserving space for human ingenuity. Because in the end, it’s not just about how long you can make a campaign last. It’s about how well you can keep it alive.