In the final post of his series on branding in the age of AI, Bill Sparks asks the practical question the first seven built toward: who's actually doing this well? From Nike to a neighborhood bakery, the answer looks surprisingly consistent.

The agency-of-record era that ran for a century is coming apart. In part seven of his branding series, Bill Sparks tracks what the industry's biggest players are doing as the ground shifts, and what it means for anyone trying to keep a brand's story straight.

Paul Pfanner takes apart the word "media" in 2026 and finds a surveillance economy sitting under the pull, then makes the case for the one thing paper can still do that a screen can't.

Companies have never had more ways to reach us, or been trusted less. Bill Sparks on how brands lost the public's trust, and what the smart ones are doing to earn it back.

Bill Sparks opens a new series on how the old branding playbook broke — and what's replacing it.