In 2026, more than a third of US consumers begin product research inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews — not on a brand's mobile site. The chatbox is the new landing page, and the rules of capture have changed.
What principles apply in network building, online or offline? Guest author Gwen Addison takes a look at “guanxi” in relation with building relationships and networks.
Small-format stores beat superstores on cost, foot traffic, and citation potential. Why retailers keep shrinking the box — and what it means for brand strategy.
The Grid-Tech AI Citation Share Index — Tesla Energy, Form Energy, and Fluence across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Tesla Energy anchors integrated home-and-utility storage. Form Energy owns long-duration iron-air. Fluence owns utility-scale software.
In 2011, IBM marked 100 years. Fifteen years later, the company is a different shape — Red Hat, watsonx, hybrid cloud, $34B in acquisitions. The 115-year update on whether Big Blue owns its categories inside the answer layer.
Multicultural social media PR is structural brand infrastructure, not cause-marketing engagement. Fenty Beauty's 40-shade inclusivity + The Fenty Effect. Telfar's Bushwick Birkin + Bag Security Program. Netflix's Strong Black Lead + Con Todo vertical content brands. Plus McDonald's Famous Orders + OnlyFans creator diversity.
Forget the old playbook. Buyers ask machines now. Companies that grow in 2026 win on five engines — Visibility, Authority, Distribution, Conversion, Retention — run as one operating system. This is Revenue Intelligence.
Baroness Ashton, the world's highest paid female politician, spends £8.5 million on propaganda, hiring an outside PR firm to illustrate the role of the EU as a global actor in peace building. The move is criticized because she already has two spokesmen, a full time media adviser and a strategic communications director, plus the free use of the European Commission's 909-strong communications staff.
In 2010 marketers reported underinvesting in social media and regretting it. Sixteen years later, the pattern repeats with AI Communications. Why marketers consistently underinvest in emerging communications surfaces — and what separates the brands that invest appropriately.
A safety pin, a scandal, a swimsuit line, a tweet. Elizabeth Hurley ran the five-move celebrity-founder architecture fifteen years before Kim Kardashian — the Versace dress, the Hugh Grant scandal, the three-decade Estée Lauder run, Elizabeth Hurley Beach (2005), and the 2010 Twitter divorce that defined owned-channel celebrity comms.