The traditional marketing funnel has been a cornerstone of customer journey mapping for decades. But in today's fragmented digital landscape, is this linear model still relevant? With the explosion of touchpoints across social media, retail media networks, and digital marketplaces, the path to purchase has become increasingly complex and unpredictable. Consumers now engage with brands through multiple channels simultaneously, often skipping traditional awareness stages entirely or circling back through consideration phases multiple times before making a decision.

To explore how today's customers actually shop, I reached out to several brand-side retail media leaders who are rethinking these traditional models. They reveal some compelling alternatives to the classic funnel - from wormholes to flywheels - that might better capture the reality of modern shopping behavior. Each perspective offers a unique lens through which to view customer journeys and suggests different strategic approaches for brands looking to meet consumers where they are.

The Wormhole Theory: Enter and Exit at Any Point

Josh Clarkson, Global Lead for Retail Media at Mars and Chief Consultant at Edify Digital Commerce Consulting, brings a unique perspective shaped by his background in theoretical physics.

"I really like the idea that the consumer journey isn't a funnel," Clarkson explains. "It's almost this kind of wormhole design through a business's marketing plans."

In Clarkson's model, the journey starts wide at the top for awareness and consideration, narrows for conversion, but then - unlike the traditional funnel - expands again for loyalty and advocacy. This expansion recognizes the tremendous value of post-purchase consumer behavior.

"It gets wider again as you go into your loyalty and your advocacy because the value of those consumers through referrals, through sharing your brand, and through driving awareness of your brand through everything other than your own paid media is really important," he notes.

This wormhole concept acknowledges that consumers can enter and exit the purchase journey at any point, defying the linear progression of traditional models.

The Explosion of Touchpoints: Engagement Before, During, and After

Todd Weagent, Director of Sales at Masimo, emphasizes how the sheer number of touchpoints has transformed the consumer journey.

"There's just so many touchpoints now and it's no longer just moving them through the funnel and it's the end of the story," Weygandt says. "Brands need to engage with the customer before, during, and after the sale."

Weagent points to specific tactics his team employs, such as adding FAQs to product detail pages based on customer reviews and commentary. This approach transforms one-way marketing communications into ongoing relationships.

"Our goal is to have a relationship with that customer for life, but also their neighbors, their family members," he says. "Word of mouth is even part of the funnel these days."

He argues that the traditional funnel is "pretty much dying" because it fails to account for the multidirectional nature of modern consumer engagement. Today's brands must think beyond the sequence of "Here's an ad, here's another ad, I'm gonna retarget you over here" to create more meaningful connections at every possible touchpoint.

The Flywheel Model: A Self-Reinforcing Loop

Julie Liu, Director of Digital Commerce at Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, advocates for adopting the flywheel model popularized by Amazon and now embraced by Walmart.

"It's less of a funnel, but it's probably more of a flywheel," Liu says. "It's a continuous self-reinforcing loop, and I think it still starts with being top of mind for the consumer, but it doesn't narrow like a traditional funnel."

In Liu's flywheel model, the journey might begin with social media or influencer content, but rather than narrowing to a conversion point and ending, it builds momentum through multiple elements:

1. Making it easier to convert through optimized customer experiences
2. Ensuring frictionless checkout processes
3. Creating content specifically designed to convert
4. Building advocacy through ratings, reviews, and user-generated content

This approach recognizes that each element reinforces the others, creating a virtuous cycle that builds momentum over time rather than a linear path with a clear endpoint.

The Bottom Line

These three perspectives share a common thread: the traditional marketing funnel no longer adequately captures how consumers engage with brands in today's complex digital landscape. Whether you visualize it as a wormhole, a web of touchpoints, or a flywheel, the key insight is that customer journeys are now non-linear, multidirectional, and continuous.

For brands, this means rethinking how we allocate resources across the entire customer experience. Rather than focusing primarily on top-of-funnel awareness or bottom-of-funnel conversion, successful strategies now require consistent engagement across all potential touchpoints and recognition that the post-purchase experience is just as critical as pre-purchase marketing.

The question isn't whether the marketing funnel is dead - it's whether your brand has evolved beyond it to meet today's consumers where they actually are.