Ipsos: Hope Is Now Personal, Not Institutional

Hope has gone private

The tenth edition of Ipsos Global Trends, based on nearly 30,000 interviews across 38 markets, points to a strange paradox. Only one in four people worldwide (25%) say they are optimistic about the state of the world over the next year. Slightly more than a third (36%) are optimistic about their own country. Yet 55% say they are optimistic about themselves and their families.

Ipsos reads the gap simply: hope has become personal. People are losing faith in institutions and the broader future, but they still believe they can navigate their own lives.

The agency gap is the real brief

For brand managers and marketers, this split is more interesting than the headline number. Shoppers are not asking brands to fix the world; they are looking for support in the places where they still feel a sense of control. Kelly Beaver, CEO of Ipsos, puts it this way: people have not given up on their futures. Instead, they are “searching for agency and meaning through communities and personal choices.”

That suggests a shift in positioning. If your message emphasises global doom, you may be adding to the anxiety consumers already feel. If your product gives a person a visible, personal win, you are selling what they actually want: a sense of progress.

Three consumer shifts to watch

• Health is becoming intentional. Over eight in ten people feel they need to do more to improve their mental and physical wellbeing. That reframes health products as tools for optimisation, not just monitoring.
• Wonder is giving way to worry on technology. AI remains popular, but 57% agree that technical progress is destroying our lives. Enthusiasm is weakening in markets and age groups key to adoption, so brands must prove social progress, not just novelty.
• Status is staging a comeback. Nearly half of people say they measure success by the things they own. In many markets, traditional markers of achievement are becoming more important, not less.

Even personal optimism is fragile

The personal optimism story has a caveat. In the United States, personal positivity dropped from 73% to 57% between 2024 and 2026, a 16-point slide. Brazil fell by the same margin, and South Africa by 11 points. So brands cannot simply assume that consumers will stay hopeful about their own lives; they need to supply credible reasons to hope.

Jennifer Bender, Partner at Ipsos Strategy3, says the search for silver linings “opens up new opportunities for brands to offer reasons and routes to be hopeful.” The strategic takeaway is not to be cheerful in a superficial way. It is to help people discover, control and communicate their identities.

What this means for your next campaign

Use the hope gap as a lens before you commit to a big idea. Ask: does this campaign make the consumer feel more in control of their own life, or does it simply describe a future they no longer trust? A “silver lining” message works when it turns a product or service into a lever for personal agency—proof of progress in a world that feels out of control.

Source: Ipsos