October 30, 2026
Welcome to The L@B Report
Welcome to this month’s issue of The L@B Report from GSG, where we explore news and insights at the intersection of media, technology, and public affairs. This month, we examine how top creators are redefining their relationships with brands, why AI is making a consistent brand identity more important than ever, and why communicators need one message architecture for employees, the public, and AI.
This issue of The L@B Report was compiled by Ryan Alexander.
In the News
Influencers Want to Be Business Partners, Not Billboards
As the creator economy matures, top influencers are trading one-off sponsorships for deeper relationships with brands.
For years, the influencer marketing business model has been largely transactional — brands pay creators, and creators promote products to their followers. Now some of the industry’s biggest names are seeking a more substantial role in the businesses they represent.
According to Digiday, top creators are becoming more selective about partnerships, pursuing equity stakes, creative control, and even executive positions. For example, creator Jordan Howlett has become chief content officer at eyewear company Blenders, helping shape everything from advertising to product development.
Takeaway
As audiences scatter across platforms and trust in institutions erodes, people increasingly take their cues from individuals they feel they know. The most successful creators have built audiences that don’t just watch their content but trust their judgment. That relationship gives them leverage to demand more than a fee for their reach.
For brands, this changes the calculus of influencer marketing. A creator who helps develop a product or shape a campaign has a stronger connection to its success than someone paid to deliver a single endorsement. But deeper partnerships also require brands to give up some creative control and recognize creators as strategic collaborators rather than simply distribution channels.
The opportunity is to build relationships that benefit both sides over time. Instead of evaluating creators primarily by follower counts and impressions, brands should consider the strength of their audience relationships, their alignment with the brand’s values, and what they can contribute beyond promotion. The same shift is coming to issue advocacy. Advocates who bring trusted messengers in earlier, shaping the argument rather than just delivering it, will get support that reads as conviction rather than sponsorship.
AI Is Making Brand Consistency More Valuable
As AI changes how consumers discover brands, the fundamentals of brand identity may matter more than ever.
AI is creating new ways for consumers to learn about companies and products. But unlike traditional advertising, where brands largely control the message, AI systems must interpret what a brand stands for across many different sources.
This makes a clear and consistent brand identity more important, not less. AI systems pull from a myriad of sources, including corporate websites, advertising, news coverage, and financial filings to construct their own descriptions of a company. As argued in Digiday, “that widens the brand to every word about the company, much of it written by sources who have never seen a brand book.”
Takeaway
Brand consistency must extend beyond visual identity to corporate communications, earned media, product information, executive commentary, and other public-facing materials. When AI systems synthesize information from multiple sources, inconsistencies between what a company says in its advertising, how it describes itself to investors, and what others say about it can become more consequential.
One of the paradoxes of AI-driven marketing is that the more sophisticated the technology becomes, the more valuable the fundamentals of branding may be. AI can help companies create and distribute content faster, but it cannot manufacture the years of consistency and consumer experience that give a brand its identity.
The organizations best positioned for AI-mediated discovery will be those that have established a clear, credible identity that remains recognizable regardless of where audiences encounter it.
One Message, Three Audiences
If AI is now reading everything an organization says, the answer isn’t a separate playbook for machines. It’s one disciplined approach for everyone.
Communications professionals have spent years adapting to an increasingly fragmented media landscape, where employees, customers, and stakeholders encounter information across dozens of platforms. Now, another audience is entering the equation: AI systems.
In a recent Axios column, its co-founder, Jim VandeHei, argues that communications now has three distinct audiences: employees, external stakeholders, and AI systems such as large language models and digital agents. His prescription is less about technology than about discipline — more sophisticated comms leadership and a common internal format and language.
Takeaway
The instinct is to treat AI as a new channel that needs its own strategy. VandeHei makes the opposite case. The same clarity that helps a busy employee or a skimming reader is what makes a message legible to a model.
The hard part is organizational. Consistency over time, as discussed above, is a brand challenge. Consistency across an organization at a single moment is an operating challenge. The CEO’s remarks, the policy team’s one-pager, the investor deck, and the website are often owned by different teams speaking slightly different languages. AI flattens all of them into one answer.
For organizations engaged in public affairs, the stakes are rising. Reporters, staffers, and coalition partners are increasingly turning to AI tools for quick background on an issue. As agents begin acting on that information, a muddled message isn’t just misunderstood. It gets acted on. The organizations that come through clearly will be the ones that treat communications as shared infrastructure, not a series of separate outputs.
More from GSG
Webinar: Space in the New Congress
The next Congress will make decisions that shape the space economy for years, and voters already have clear views on where it should go. Join our live webinar with Space Policy Group on Wednesday, November 18, at 2:00 PM ET for a conversation that connects the two.
GSG Senior Vice President of Research Melissa Bell will present findings from The Next Frontier, our national survey of voters on space and the space economy, including where Americans agree across party lines and why competition with China resonates. Mike French, founder of Space Policy Group and former NASA Chief of Staff, will then preview the 2027 space policy agenda, followed by audience Q&A.