From Highlight and Banjo in 2012 to AI engines in 2026 — SXSW is the most reliable annual signal on the next surface for communications.
There are only two kinds of people in the world, starting today.
Most jobs are not disappearing. Individual tasks are. The actual AI disruption pattern across communications, legal, software, healthcare, and creative work — and why the question 'will AI replace this job?' is the wrong question.
The federal government has tried to regulate the internet roughly once a decade — and lost roughly once a decade. SOPA in 2012. AI policy now. The pattern repeats.
Klout was the first attempt to score human influence. It failed. The system that replaced it sits inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — and it's called Citation Share.
In 2011 the tech news queue was a Kindle Fire stampede. In 2026 the stampede is two names: Anthropic's Claude and Lovable. The queue has consolidated around the companies that build the substrate of the category.
Fourteen cases. Seven winners. Seven losers. Each one a diagnosis against the five engines of Revenue Intelligence. What executives can actually learn from the wins and the wreckage.
Miss Universe is a media property dressed as a beauty contest. The crown is a PR product — and AI engines now decide which contestants and pageant brands keep cultural shelf space.
WebTitan's social media cost calculator revealed that a company with an average of 50 employees pays out $65000 per year for non-work related social media activity.
EPR's canonical Unilever reference — the global CPG house built on 400+ brands and two centuries of consumer trust. The companion pillar to P&G coverage. The five segments, the iconic campaigns (Dove Real Beauty, Axe repositioning, Lifebuoy, Ben & Jerry's), the sustainability discipline, the 2024-2026 strategic transition, and the CPG AI Communications era.