AI agents now mediate brand discovery—before any campaign, any search result, any human decision. This biweekly essay covers IBM's finding (45% of consumers use AI in buying journeys), the AMA-NY 40-point optimism gap, Salsify's 14% trust stat, Adobe's AI transparency demand, and Kantar/Gartner/BCG frameworks for AI-era brand infrastructure. RDLB's argument: the brands that win aren't the ones with the best AI stack—they're the ones whose brand story is clear, consistent, and

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer documents a new trust crisis: insularity. Seven in ten people globally distrust those with different values. RDLB's R* Briefing Issue 003 analyzes what this means for brand trust strategy 2026—why broadcast is failing, how community credibility compounds, and why the creator mechanism now matters more than reach.

Autonomous AI agents now research, compare, and shortlist brands before a human ever loads a page. RDLB's R* Briefing Issue 002 covers AI agents brand strategy: why machine legibility is the new brand architecture, the 30-point trust expectation gap, and what brands must do to remain chosen in an agentic commerce environment.

Grupo Bimbo is the world's largest bakery company—yet most Americans don't know it exists. This biweekly essay examines Bimbo's dual identity problem: dominant household brand in LatAm, invisible parent company in the US. RDLB analyzes the house-of-brands vs. branded-house dilemma, the premiumization ceiling in both markets, a comparison with Grupo Modelo's cross-border success via Corona, and three Hemispheric Scan data points on Natura &Co, Unilever LatAm, and Bimbo's Q1 20

This week's R* Briefing covers three brand architecture moves driven by commercial reality, not creative whim. Burger King retired the King mascot and launched a honesty-first platform backed by its $700M Reclaim the Flame overhaul. Sprite rebuilt its global platform around cultural credibility in hip-hop and youth culture. Unilever scaled its creator network to 300K to support Hellmann's and Knorr. Plus: WPP signals another holding company restructuring. RDLB's take on why b

Unilever is simultaneously running U-Studio (an in-house creative operation in 20+ countries) and scaling its creator network to 300,000 influencers across 190 countries. Most coverage frames this as a cost story — RDLB argues it's a structural brand architecture decision: separating brand stewardship from brand distribution. This essay explains the U-Studio model, CEO Fernandez's 50% social media shift, the tension between distributed execution and brand coherence, and what

RDLB's 2026 Consumer Trends Report identifies 7 key dynamics reshaping brand strategy: Fast Premium, Aspirational Humanity, Ritualized Euphoria, Long-Form Depth, Synthetic Realities (IP over influence), the Luddite Class, and the Adornment Effect. The unifying insight: consumers in 2026 are reclaiming authorship of taste, identity, and meaning.