2026 | Edelman

I had lunch this past weekend with long-time friend Lord Michael Heseltine, former deputy prime minister of the UK. He is indeed the Lion in Winter, now 93 years old, but sharp and passionate. I know Heseltine through Haymarket, his publishing company, which owns PRWeek. We met in 1996 when he was considering whether to launch an American edition of PRWeek. Edelman became the first advertiser (whether Michael or his son Rupert sold that ad I will leave to them).

Heseltine is a member of the House of Lords, having served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001. He founded Haymarket in 1957; his proudest achievement is CAMPAIGN, the bible of the marketing sector, now in 18 countries. He would stand down from work in the private sector when he held important positions in Government, including Deputy PM, Secretary of State for Environment, then Aerospace, then Defense. He is famously known for his challenge to then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990 for leadership of the party because of her Euro-skeptic view, prompting her resignation from office in favor of John Major.

Here are a few of the important points from our luncheon:

The UK Must Come Back into Europe—Heseltine was very much part of the push to get the UK into the European Union in 1973 as part of the Edward Heath government. He contends that the UK is much better off with trading privileges, labor and capital mobility. He believes that the last decade in Britain has been one of economic underperformance.
Devolution Works—He led the push for more powerful mayors in key cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, taking powers away from the central government, enabling local supervision of critical services. He knows Andy Burnham, former Mayor of Manchester, very well and rates him highly as a possible successor to Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.
EU Needs Independent Defense Capabilities—He told me about a visit from an American general in the mid-80s, seeking UK technology for the development of the Star Wars defense shield against Russian nuclear arms. He recognized that the U.S. was cherry-picking technologies from key countries. It would enable the U.S. to leapfrog its European competitors not just in defense, but in the broader technology sector. He turned down the $100 million offer and instead worked with other defense ministers to create the Typhoon fighter jet as an EU project.
The Hong Kong Turnover—He was deputy PM when Hong Kong was turned over by the UK to China on July 1, 1997. He negotiated a respectable departure for the UK military with the help of the Chinese deputy PM. Both sides recognized the magnitude of the moment and the necessity of dignity for all involved. Heseltine was in Hong Kong for the handover, remembering the words of the British commander to his troops. “Company, depart Hong Kong.”
The Power of Entrepreneurs—Heseltine proudly showed me the Saatchi & Saatchi ad “Labour Isn’t Working” that propelled Margaret Thatcher to electoral victory in the early 80s. He also showed an ad from the Labour party from the 1920s in the wake of the post WWI recession with a worker asking for help to get a job. His view is reflective of his own experience as an entrepreneur now employing 3,000 people across the world. Give small business owners the chance and they will build something big. He is deeply concerned about the departure of the wealthy from the UK.
Business/Government Cooperation Imperative—Heseltine is a believer in a constructive partnership between the two sectors. He cited the defense industry as one example of pioneering technology developed by government with business for the space program that later led to semiconductor prowess of the U.S. He also led the right to buy for public housing in the UK...privatization of the council houses in the 90s.

Heseltine and I spoke for more than three hours as he led me on a tour of the grounds of his home, including a giant statue of Vladimir Lenin that he acquired from a newly freed state (Latvia) after the fall of the Soviet Union. We talked about the Omnicom Interpublic merger, the travails of WPP, the end of so many creative agencies (Burnett, FCB, Y&R, Grey, DDB) and the use of AI in communications. I had the same kind of relationship with my father, Daniel, founder of Edelman, who passed in 2013, talking for hours about business, politics and family. It was a day to remember forever.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health shows a healthcare environment that is both familiar and newly complex. People still trust doctors and healthcare professionals. But those trusted experts now sit within a much broader information ecosystem, where AI, creators, peers, online communities, and personal experience all play a role in shaping health decisions.

This was the focus of our recent Edelman EMEA panel, Who Shapes Health Decisions Now? Trust, Influence, and Credibility in an AI- and Creator-Driven Healthcare Ecosystem. The discussion brought together voices from across the health landscape: Alex Ruani, University College London researcher in health misinformation; Mazar Masud, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at M42; Dr Ahmed Ezzat, surgeon, creator and founder of Health Creator Leaders; and Dr Lewis Arthurton, Head of Policy and Communications at Alzheimer’s Disease International.

One of the most striking findings in this year’s report is that the problem is not simply that people lack information. In many cases, they have too much of it. They are searching more, reading more, comparing more and turning to more sources than ever before. Yet this does not always make them feel more confident.

As Alex Ruani said during the discussion, “We often assume that more information leads to better decisions, but the data suggests the opposite is happening right now.” She described the challenge as “less as an information deficit problem” and more of a question of information quality and navigation.

That is an important point for health communicators. For many years, we have worked on the basis that the right information, clearly explained, will help people make better choices. That remains true, but it is no longer sufficient. People need help to work out which sources to trust, which claims to question and what a piece of information means for them personally.

The report also challenges the idea that divisive health beliefs sit at the margins. They are more mainstream, more widespread and less predictable than many might expect. They cut across age, education and political identity. Often, they are held by people who are highly engaged with health information, not disengaged from it.

Lewis Arthurton reflected on the long shadow of contested health information, referencing the MMR debate in the UK and its lasting consequences. “If we’re needing to now go back a quarter of a century and revisit what should be established scientific fact and understanding, how do we as a community tackle the evolving evidence landscape around dementia?”

This is the reality facing health organisations. Trust can be lost quickly, but it is rebuilt slowly. It is also not rebuilt by assertion alone. It requires consistency, humility and a clear understanding of what people are hearing elsewhere.

AI adds a further layer. More than a third of people in the report say they are already using AI to manage their health. Mazar Masud described this as being driven by “the need for immediate answers to questions, to interpret medical test results, to not have to wait.” This is understandable. In stretched health systems, people will look for fast, accessible guidance.

But AI also brings questions of accuracy, privacy, safety and accountability. As Mazar said, “The trust needs to be built in this space.” Health organisations cannot afford to treat AI as a future issue. It is already part of the way many people are forming views about their health.

Creators are now part of that same trust equation. Dr Ahmed Ezzat argued that healthcare professionals cannot be absent from the places where people are seeking information. “Doctors really should not be complacent,” he said. “We need to move the popular mass of healthcare professionals into responsible content creation.”

His point is not that expertise should be replaced by popularity. Quite the opposite. Credible expertise needs to travel better. As Ahmed put it, “The concept of my doctor isn’t just within the four walls of a clinic room.” Trusted voices need to be present where people are already listening.

This also means being thoughtful about who carries health messages. Reach is not the same as credibility. A large audience does not make someone the right partner. Equally, a scientific qualification alone does not guarantee that someone can communicate in a way that feels relevant and human.

Perhaps the clearest conclusion from the panel was that health organisations need to move from being only sources of authority to becoming trusted guides. That does not mean weakening the role of expertise. It means making expertise more useful.

Lewis made the case for grounding communication in lived experience: “Communication needs to be grounded in the reality of what people are experiencing every day.” Without that, he warned, “we lose that trust.”

Alex captured the same point from another angle: “People are not looking to be dictated to; they are looking for guidance.”

That is the challenge for health communicators now. We must understand who our audiences trust, where they go for information, and what assumptions they bring with them. We must work with a wider group of credible voices, including healthcare professionals, patient communities, creators, and people with lived experience. And we must communicate with clarity, empathy, and regularity.

The answer is not to speak louder. It is to be more useful, more present and more trusted in the moments when people are trying to make decisions that matter.

Watch the full recording of the Edelman EMEA panel to hear the complete discussion with Alex Ruani, Mazar Masud, Dr Ahmed Ezzat and Lewis Arthurton.

I was recently invited to join a panel hosted by media monitoring and analytics company Vuelio on how AI is changing the information landscape and how communications professionals can factor these changes - and the uncertainty they create - into their strategies.

The session was chaired by Pulsar Group’s Head of Content Marketing Alex Bryson and brought together – alongside me – Pearson’s Director of Financial Communications Laura Ewart and Vuelio’s Head of Insights Strategy Amy Chappell. It was a timely discussion because, while AI is often framed as a disruptive force, I think its most immediate impact is more subtle: AI is not necessarily bringing about a paradigm change for communications, at least not yet. It is, however, a powerful accelerant.

AI as an accelerant

Many of the dynamics we associate with AI-enabled communications have been developing for years: faster story cycles, more fragmented audiences, less predictable patterns in which messages travel, and a declining reliance on traditional gatekeepers. AI is intensifying and sometimes exacerbating all of these trends.

The recently published Digital News Report, from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, provides useful context. Its latest findings point to a continuing decline in engagement with traditional media sources, alongside growing reliance on social media; additionally, growing concerns about misinformation, trust in news, news avoidance all add to a highly volatile picture. In other words, the information environment was already fragmenting before generative AI became a mainstream concern.

One concept I raised during the panel was the idea of ‘context collapse.’ Messages that would once have been mediated through a relatively limited number of mass media channels are now travelling directly and unpredictably across platforms, reaching multiple overlapping communities and audiences. They can be reinterpreted, reframed, and redistributed at speed.

This makes communications strategy harder. It creates fertile ground for misinformation and disinformation to proliferate, while LLMs now insert additional layers of interpretation between organisations and the people they are trying to reach.

Organisations therefore need a clear understanding of where they are appearing, how their messages are being interpreted, and which voices or sources are shaping stakeholder perceptions.

AI as a new stakeholder

Another interesting point we discussed was whether AI should be treated as an audience in its own right. AI tools are already mediating information for users, summarising content, prioritising sources, and packaging answers for audiences: this has important implications for reputation management, because the signals AI systems draw from can shape how organisations are understood.

While communicators may increasingly need to consider LLMs as a new audience, the underlying objective remains familiar: establishing authority and ensuring that people can access trustworthy, relevant information in a noisy, synthetic information environment. That is why earned media, credible commentary, and authentic human voices become even more important in an AI-mediated world. They help establish authority with both human audiences and the systems increasingly shaping what those audiences see, hear, and trust.

Embedding intelligence into comms

My view is that the most pressing practical challenge for comms professionals is to gather enough evidence to build a baseline and understand this new landscape.

Communications teams should start by mapping how their organisation, brands, and products currently appear in AI-generated search and answer environments This means understanding which sources are being cited by LLMs, assessing their accuracy, identifying and addressing any gaps in the information ecosystem.

Communications professionals have navigated similar shifts before: the rise of digital news, the growth of social media, and the move toward visual and creator-led content all forced organisations to rethink how they measure influence, reputation, and trust. AI represents another such inflection point, requiring a fresh benchmark for understanding how information is discovered, interpreted, and acted upon.

This is where communications can become (even) more intelligence-led. There is an opportunity to understand and shape the dynamics of trust more holistically, and AI can play a role in this too, helping insight and comms professionals achieve more, and more efficiently.

AI-powered intelligence can help sift through signals to predict what’s around the corner for organisations; it can help turn that knowledge to power culturally relevant and impactful communication strategies; and it can support smarter measurement, evaluation, and attribution, helping teams demonstrate the impact of their work.

AI will continue to change the mechanics of communications. The organisations that succeed will be those that marry new tools and approaches with the long-standing fundamentals of the profession: building and protecting trust by delivering relevant, authoritative content with a healthy dose of empathy and human judgement. Or, as Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer puts it, acting as ‘trust brokers to bridge divides.’

The new dynamic of insularity is confronting brand marketers selling to consumers unsettled by inflation, geopolitics, AI, and misinformation. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Growth in an Insular World, covering 15 nations and 17,688 respondents, finds two thirds of consumers are hesitant or unwilling to trust those with different core values, information sources, cultural backgrounds, and solutions to societal problems. These insular consumers are twice as likely to be unwilling to use brands that are associated with people who are different from them, compared to consumers with open trust mindsets.

Growth requires attracting and retaining customers, but insularity threatens it in ways that marketers are not currently addressing. That’s because brands are being judged on the identity of who uses them, not just what they do. Brands have taken on greater social significance: over half of our respondents (54%) say that they feel a connection to people who use the same brands that they do, up eight points in the past five years. Because of that, 4 in 10 Gen Z and Millennial consumers are using brands in secret in order to avoid social stigma. Nationalism is a further extension of this tribalism, with two thirds of respondents saying that a brand being domestically headquartered is an important or critical purchase deal breaker.

In this new context, relevance is broadened beyond utility and presence in pop culture, to include community connection, emotional resonance, and identity. In fact, our data reveals that pop culture fluency is the least effective way to achieve relevance, and yet it is often a brand’s go-to relevance ploy. Brands are failing to achieve relevance among those with an insular mindset, with a 26-point gap between performance and effectiveness on identity reflection and 21-point gap on community connection. Brands must incorporate these dimensions into their relevance strategies in ways that address consumers’ needs for security, belonging, and peace of mind.

The combination of trust and relevance effectively doubles a brand’s growth potential in a way that neither can alone. When consumers don’t trust brands and don’t find them relevant, only 36% say they are willing to continue to use a brand that decides to start selling to people who are different from themselves. With trust alone, that number goes up to 48%. With relevance alone, that number goes up to 53%. But when consumers both trust brands and find them relevant, acceptance of selling to those who differ from them goes up to 71%.

An earned approach is the best way to leverage an integrated trust and relevance strategy. Unpaid voices are 5x more powerful than paid brand voices for the insular when it comes to driving trust. Nearly half of the insular (46%) say that unpaid voices have the biggest impact on their willingness to trust a brand. Conversations must start within narrow trust circles. When it comes to sharing brand information, the insular trust friends and family (82%) and Someone Like Me (76%), but distrust celebrities (42%). In an insular world, brands don’t have the license to declare they are relevant and trustworthy: it must be proven out by experience.

The central paradox of growth in 2026 is that consumers increasingly want brands to feel more personal, while brands need to become more broadly accepted and global. The answer is not micro-targeting through advertising, it is to have enough trust and relevance that consumers see the brand as a reflection of themselves while being open to sharing it with other people who are not. It is done through leveraging an earned strategy, acting as a polynational, and making an outstanding product. Brands that solve this paradox will turn insularity from a barrier of growth into a source of competitive advantage.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

I went to the opening of the Obama Presidential Center yesterday with my brother John. It was a star-studded event, with former Presidents Clinton, Bush and Biden along with their first ladies, local politicians including Senator Dick Durbin, Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, dozens of CEOs from the Chicago area including Tom Wilson of Allstate, Jennifer Scanlon of UL and Michael O’Grady of Northern Trust, plus media notables David Letterman, Michael Wilbon, and Stephen Colbert.

This was a sweet walk down memory lane for both Barack and Michelle Obama. The President said that he came to Chicago after law school in a “janky old car that had all of my belongings in the trunk and back seat.” He said that his entire adult life was spent on the South Side of Chicago. He talked about his experience as a community organizer going door-to-door to register voters. He pointed north toward the Ramada Inn where he announced his candidacy for the State Senate. He spoke tenderly about his daughters who went to nearby University of Chicago Lab School. Then he extolled his wife; “marrying her was the best thing I did in my life.” He was careful in his remarks about the present political situation in the U.S. but did assert that every American is due life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that democracy relies on hope and that the world is better with America as a selfless agent of progress.

Michelle Obama was far less restrained in her speech. She decried the lack of honesty and constant disinformation from the political class. She said that the present pursuit of personal financial gain by those in government is unseemly and unacceptable. She encouraged all citizens to vote, to participate in the political process, to work for change. She was full of admiration for her husband, who “never lost his temper and never felt overwhelmed by any challenge…the values my husband has exemplified for his entire life; equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion and fairness.”

The artistic community came in full force. Common and John Legend performed together. Bono delivered a lovely musical tribute to Michelle Obama, even crooning “Michelle my belle,” before going over for a hug. Marc Anthony delighted the crowd with his “Vivir Mi Vida” (To Live My Life). Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Hudson performed solos of the President’s favorite Broadway hits.

The OPC is not a traditional Presidential library. It is intended to be more of a university, educating future public servants in a non-partisan way, giving them the tools to compete in elections or to be effective administrators. There have already been ten classes of Obama Scholars who have gone on to serve in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. The OPC will also be a vital community center, with a world-class basketball court, garden for growing healthy foods, children’s recreation park and conference facility. The former President said, “There is a new generation out there ready to write the next chapter of our story. We intend to help them to do it, and we ask that you join us.”

As I walked out of the event today, I had President Obama's words in my head. "There is unfinished business. The work must go on." Amen to that for all of us in the communications world, dedicated not only to educating the public on the issues of the day, but also to building trust, creating understanding, and inspiring people to engage in the work of strengthening their communities and institutions.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

I went to the Brazil-Morocco World Cup match on Saturday with our Unilever clients. As a soccer novice, I had no idea what to expect. Here are a few observations:

The Brazilian Fans Are Passionate—The most colorful outfits, the singing and dancing in the stands, the bird chirps when the team goes on offense, the colorful epithets on a missed try on goal…Brazil has it all.
Player of the Day—Brazil’s Vinícius Júnior whose speed and athleticism allowed him to score on a sharp angle shot from the left side. He was a constant menace to the Moroccan defense.
Second Player of the Day— Achraf Hakimi of Morocco whose stellar defense and near full field runs were a lesson in anticipation and fitness.
Pre-Game Ceremony—A fantastic example of sports healing the world, with two giant flags covering much of the field, the national anthem of each country, the little kids walked onto the field by the players.
Fan Experiences—Doritos, Casamigos, Michelob Ultra, Dove and Coca-Cola had fan experiences, from food and beverage to outdoor showers to interactive games including a soccer challenge where participants attempted to head balls suspended above the ground (I was just able to graze one at 2.6 meters high with the top of my head).
Creators—We were seated with a group of creators from the Middle East. One young guy from Egypt told me that he has 6 million followers. He started an Olé, Olé, Olé chant, he supported Brazil in return for my wife Claudia’s pledge to support Egypt and was a constant delight for three hours.
Contrasting Styles—Morocco’s disciplined passing and defense stood in sharp relief to the ingenuity and panache of the individual Brazilian players. The system versus the entrepreneur, with the teams playing to a 1-1 draw.
The MetLife Stadium Staff—They were approachable and kind. They offered directions, were willing to take photos and made me proud that Americans could be such great hosts.

I feel privileged to have been part of the event. Thank you, Unilever, for allowing Claudia and me to be part of this tournament.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

Global communications firm, Edelman, has today announced the renewal of its strategic partnership with Founders Forum Group, a curated global community of the world’s leading digital and technology entrepreneurs and group of businesses supporting entrepreneurs at every stage of their journeys.

This year’s Founders Forum Global, held from 9–11 June, gathered the world’s most influential technology founders, CEOs, investors, and policymakers, featuring impactful discussions shaping the future of business and technology. The event hosted its highest calibre guestlist to date with 450 entrepreneurs, including nearly 300 unicorn founders. Founders in the room achieved an aggregate valuation of over $1 trillion. Investors in the room, meanwhile, represented $2 trillion in Assets Under Management.

While most of the event takes place under the Chatham House Rule, the forum’s dedicated livestream stage highlighted a series of thought-provoking conversations to a global audience via Bloomberg. This year, a select number of podcasts were also invited to record an episode live at the event, including The Business of Creativity, The Times Tech Podcast, Time to Talk Quantum, CNBC’s The Tech Download, and Laura Brown’s All the Cool Girls Get Fired.

This year’s partnership builds on Edelman’s ongoing collaboration with Founders Forum Group’s global portfolio of forums, which tackle defining questions around innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership.

This year’s event comes at a time when CEOs are increasingly called upon to play a more active role in rebuilding trust across divides. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer finds that 70% of people globally have an insular trust mindset, meaning they are hesitant or unwilling to trust someone different from themselves. The tech leaders convened at this year’s Founders Forum Global face a unique opportunity to deepen trust in emerging technologies by serving as trust brokers: building open dialogue, forging cross-sector collaboration and demonstrating forward-looking leadership that helps people feel greater confidence in the innovations affecting their lives.

“The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that seven in ten people globally are hesitant to trust those unlike themselves – but the founders and leaders we convene at Founders Forum Global are uniquely placed to turn that around,” said Carolyn Dawson, CEO, Founders Forum Group. “The entrepreneurs in this room have built companies that billions of people rely on, and they've already proven that bold ideas and genuine human connection can transcend divides. Our continued partnership with Edelman brings together two organisations that share that same optimism, and a commitment to giving the world's most innovative leaders the platform to build something bigger than their businesses.”

“Founders Forum Group continues to create a vital space for CEOs to come together and confront the realities of leading in an increasingly divided world. This year’s Edelman Trust Barometer found that 73% of people globally believe CEOs have a responsibility to bridge divides and build trust, yet only 44% believe business leaders are doing so effectively. That gap is the opportunity. Spaces like Founders Forum Global and its Chair & CEO Forum give leaders the chance to engage candidly, learn from one another, and strengthen their role as trusted stewards of business and society,” said Julian Payne, CEO, EMEA and Global Chair, Crisis & Risk at Edelman.

Across sectors, brands are facing a far more crowded environment than ever before: audiences are overwhelmed by information, sceptical of automation, and increasingly selective about where they place their trust.

At the same time, AI tools are changing how people find, consume and share content.

Together, these shifts are redefining what strong brand storytelling looks like. Our Editorial team in EMEA has identified five major societal trends reshaping the way we help brands tell their stories.

Understanding them will not only help companies communicate more effectively in an increasingly fragmented landscape – it will help them stay visible, trusted and relevant as media consumption continues to evolve.

1. Living in the Age of Insularity

Audiences are increasingly retreating into smaller, more trusted networks. According to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, seven in 10 people globally are hesitant or unwilling to trust someone different from themselves. Exposure to opposing viewpoints has continually declined across most markets, while trust consolidates around employers, peers and close communities.

At the same time, expectations of business are evolving. People increasingly look to brands to play a steadier role in increasingly divided environments – not by amplifying conflict, but by encouraging cooperation and shared understanding.

This modifies the role of storytelling. Instead of reinforcing a single viewpoint, brands should recognise different perspectives and help build trust between them. This means creating balanced thought leadership, cross-perspective features and multi-stakeholder narratives that bring different viewpoints into the same conversation. The strongest brand content creates space for nuance and common ground, recognising that in a fragmented world, trust is increasingly built through balanced perspectives rather than absolute truths.

2. Prioritising Depth over Breadth

Contrary to popular belief, audiences are not necessarily disengaging from content – they are simply becoming far more selective about what deserves their attention.

Younger audiences, in particular, are increasingly overwhelmed by constant feeds and the pressure of perpetual online presence. Many Gen Z users are now posting less and are on the lookout for useful content that feels relevant to them.

At the same time, people increasingly value expertise and insight online. Learning, expertise and curiosity are increasingly perceived as ‘status’ signals – particularly across social platforms that audiences turn to for skills, ideas and analysis rather than passive entertainment.

For brands, this marks a significant shift in editorial strategy. Audiences are rewarding content that is focused, useful and relevant, but also content that teaches them something new, amplifies their knowledge and helps them better understand the world around them. Formats such as insight series, concise explainers, data-led storytelling and specialist analysis are gaining traction.

In overstimulated environments, expertise often cuts through more effectively than volume.

3. Giving a Human Edge

As AI-generated content proliferates, audiences are becoming more sceptical about what – and who – they are engaging with. Consumers increasingly want transparency around AI use, stronger accountability and clearer signs of human judgement.

As a result, identifiable human voices are becoming far more valuable. Authority increasingly comes from content that is attributable, accountable and grounded in real experience – from executive commentary and expert interviews to thought leadership and op-eds.

Rather than removing humans from communications workflows, the brands building trust most effectively are leaning into expertise, recognising that in a market flooded with AI-generated content, identifiable voices are a competitive advantage.

4. The Reign of a New Media Order

People no longer encounter news and information through a single source. Audiences increasingly find information through feeds, recommendations, newsletters, creators and personal networks rather than centralised platforms.

Emerging platforms such as Substack are creating new opportunities for experts, journalists and brands to build direct relationships with highly engaged audiences. These platforms reward depth, consistency and specialist knowledge.

This means content can no longer be built for just one platform or audience: it must move effectively across various ecosystems without losing clarity or relevance.

To meet these changing behaviours, brands are increasingly investing in short-form social content, visual storytelling and shareable commentary. At the same time, credibility is becoming more distributed, with executives, experts and employees increasingly driving reach and trust beyond corporate channels.

In a fragmented media environment, the most effective storytelling is designed to work across multiple formats and touchpoints.

5. Finding Needles in the (AI) Haystack

The rise of generative AI is fundamentally changing how people find information online. Audiences are no longer just searching – they are asking AI platforms to interpret, recommend and synthesise it for them.

This represents a paradigm shift for brands' online visibility: content now needs to be suited to both human audiences and AI platforms, which prioritise clarity, structure, authority and easy-to-reference insights.

While earned media remains a major driver of AI visibility, senior leadership quotes and hard data significantly increase the likelihood of being surfaced in AI-generated responses. For brands, the challenge extends beyond traditional SEO to creating content that is easy to discover, reference and trust.

In an information environment increasingly shaped by AI, visibility belongs to brands with distinctive and authoritative viewpoints.

The Future of Brand Storytelling

Taken together, these trends reflect a wider shift in how brands communicate. Content has now moved closer to the core of reputation building, shaping how organisations earn attention, build trust and stay relevant in an overcrowded media environment.

The strongest editorial strategies today are grounded in credibility, clarity and originality. They prioritise human perspective over volume, substance over visibility tactics, and useful insight over corporate messaging.

Human-led and accountable
Relevant and genuinely useful
Designed for different platforms and formats
Built to travel across social and AI-driven environments
Rooted in expertise and clear points of view

As algorithms continue to gain traction and audiences become more selective, the future belongs to the most trusted brands, rather than the loudest ones.

Alice Tchernookova is Associate Director, Editorial.

The World Cup gets underway on Thursday in Mexico City, making Mexico the first country in the world to host the quadrennial extravaganza three times. I watched the Netflix film “Mexico 86” over the weekend, the tale of Mexico’s fairy tale success in hosting the World Cup in 1986, only a year after a disastrous earthquake struck Mexico City. It is a powerful story of ambition, bravado and entrepreneurial hustle. The lead character, Martín de la Torre, is a fictional composite who talks his way into leadership of the Mexican Football Federation, recruits media titan Emilio Azcárraga to support the bid and finds a way to persuade FIFA to award the host country status, besting the better funded U.S.

The 1986 World Cup was scheduled to be held in Colombia but an outbreak of narco-terrorism in 1985 forced the nation’s president to withdraw, opening the field to other bidders. The Mexican and American delegations went to work on the 12 nations that are represented on the FIFA board. Through emotional appeals to Third World brotherhood, the Mexicans were confident of victory. Then the Americans began their hardball tactics, for example offering missiles to the Egyptians in return for their vote. De la Torre was unphased, phoning Azcárraga for massive cash infusions, then delivering briefcases filled with money to wavering delegates. The final vote was comical; de la Torre rearranges the seating cards so that the first voters were South American (Chile), giving momentum to the Mexican bid, which wins out over the U.S.

Then disaster struck on September 19, 1985, when an epic earthquake devastated Mexico City. The 8.0 earthquake killed as many as 35,000 people (Government estimate was 5,000), collapsed 400 buildings, damaged 3,500 buildings, with total property loss of $4 billion. FIFA decides that Mexico cannot possibly recover in time from the disaster, so it sends one of its top officials to Mexico City to deliver the bad news in person. De la Torre arranges a Potemkin village welcome, including a traffic free journey from the airport to the city center, where he shows the FIFA official how thousands of Mexicans (including my wife Claudia, then age 14) were rescuing victims from the wreckage and helping devastated neighborhoods to survive. Finally, they arrive to a stadium filled with 25,000 fans singing football songs and showing that Mexico was the right place for the tournament.

The Mexican team had been a chronic under-performer in the World Cup. But with the tournament on home ground, the team had a miraculous run, to the round of eight, including an epic scissor kick winning goal against Bulgaria by Manuel Negrete, voted the most beautiful goal in Mexican history. Mexico played the strong German team to a stand-off in the quarterfinals, then lost 4-1 on penalty kicks. De la Torre, attempting to keep the momentum from the tournament, decides to stack the junior teams competing in world competitions with older players. The scheme is discovered, FIFA bans Mexico from the next World Cup and de la Torre is disgraced and dismissed by the Mexican Federation.

The film is a stunning story of resilience and creativity, a true triumph of the underdog. De la Torre is a flawed character but his belief in his country and the possibility of outsmarting the hated Yankees is worth everything. I am going to the World Cup match Brazil-Morocco on Saturday in New Jersey…pictures to come!

Richard Edelman is CEO.

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2. Prioritising Depth over Breadth

3. Giving a Human Edge

4. The Reign of a New Media Order

5. Finding Needles in the (AI) Haystack

The Future of Brand Storytelling

Mexico 86

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