In an op-ed published in Cadre Dirigeant Magazine, Élodie Barlow, Head of o3, examines the new challenges of content creation in the age of AI and puts forward a clear conviction: as the volume of content continues to grow, a brand’s value increasingly depends on building genuine editorial capital.

At the end of 2025, speaking on the BBC, Sir Martin Sorrell made two statements that sent shockwaves through the industry. First: “PR is dead.” Then, as advice for thriving in the digital age: “flood the Internet with content.” Coming from the founder of WPP, for many years the world’s leading advertising executive, the comments were anything but insignificant. And the second statement is the most revealing, because it says out loud what countless organisations are already doing quietly.

It is also, quite precisely, the wrong answer.

Sorrell is not wrong in his diagnosis. Producing a piece of copy, a video or a visual now costs next to nothing. In a matter of seconds, and for just a few euros, a brand can create what once required an entire team working for a week. The problem lies elsewhere: from an accurate observation, we are drawing the wrong conclusion. If we can flood the market, then let us flood it. And in doing so, we confuse a revolution with something that looks much more like devaluation.

Because artificial intelligence has solved a problem no one ever asked it to solve: the shortage of content. Yet it has done nothing to address the only issue that really matters: value. The figures are staggering. Bynder’s State of DAM study estimates that three quarters of branded content will already have been “touched” by AI in 2026, with near-universal adoption expected within a year. A team can now produce ten versions of the same piece of content in the time it once took to develop just one. The question is what those ten versions are actually worth. Are they reliable? Consistent? Even recognisable? Few leadership teams stop to ask.

That is where the gap lies, and it is stark. McKinsey’s 2025 global survey puts figures to it: 88% of organisations regularly use AI in at least one business function, yet barely a third have begun scaling those uses across the organisation. Almost everyone is producing; almost no one has laid the foundations required to control that production. We have industrialised content creation before even deciding what we want to say.

The False Promise of “More”

If we can produce more, then let us produce more. More articles, more posts, more newsletters, more short-form content. The logic of volume has one advantage: it is easy to measure. A publishing frequency, a content counter, and suddenly everyone feels reassured. It creates the impression of progress.

But attention does not work that way. It will not expand to absorb the increased output. In a space already saturated with content, every additional message does not simply add to those that came before it: it dissolves into them. Flooding an already crowded space does not increase visibility; it simply accelerates a brand’s own commoditisation. A strong brand does not stack campaign upon campaign. It leaves a mark, layer by layer. And constant agitation, by definition, leaves nothing behind.

The paradox needs to be confronted: the more content production becomes free and unlimited, the more value shifts elsewhere. Towards consistency. Towards a distinctive point of view. Towards credibility that is accumulated slowly over time. Towards precisely those things that machines cannot create on their own.

Why Content Fails to Build Capital

When content fails to “build capital”, the problem is not the amount being produced. The problem is that nothing connects it. In most organisations, visual identity, messaging, communications and media impact operate in silos, each carefully refined in isolation. There is no architecture holding them together, no governance ensuring they speak to one another. As a result, each piece of content is born and dies alone, with no memory of what came before it. It behaves like a campaign output: seen one day, forgotten the next, when it should instead function as an asset — reusable, cumulative and increasingly valuable over time.

The Other Penalty: Algorithmic Invisibility

There is something even more concerning, and every business leader should pay attention to it. Generic content is not only ineffective with human audiences. It is also becoming invisible to the machines that increasingly determine what we see. AI-powered search engines and large language models no longer simply rank pages: they cite sources. And they are learning to filter out interchangeable content in favour of material that demonstrates genuine expertise and a clearly sustained position.

The mechanism is unforgiving. A model checks whether a statement appears elsewhere and whether it is corroborated. A generic sentence passes that test easily because everyone is saying the same thing — but that is precisely why an AI has no reason to cite one brand rather than another. By repeating what ten competitors have already published, a company builds no authority of its own. It blends into the background, then disappears. “Flooding the Internet” was supposed to maximise visibility; instead, the result is drowning.

Think in Terms of Assets, Not Flows

The logic therefore needs to be reversed. We must stop treating content as a flow that has to be restarted every morning and start thinking of it as capital — an editorial asset that is built, strengthened and becomes more valuable over time.

Editorial capital is not a pile of publications. It is an architecture. A clearly defined territory of convictions in which a brand chooses to build authority rather than comment on everything. A recognisable voice, consistent across channels and from one year to the next. In practical terms, this means connecting what remains fragmented today: a brand platform that sets the direction, an editorial strategy that translates it into communication, and a governance model that brings messaging, creative work, public relations and sales materials into conversation rather than keeping them separate. This kind of authority cannot be improvised, nor can it be bought through sheer volume. It is built in the same way as financial capital: through disciplined choices sustained over time. Choosing one angle means rejecting ten others. Sticking to a clear line means resisting the temptation to react to everything.

Within this framework, AI regains a valuable role. It can adapt a message, tailor formats, reinforce consistency and accelerate execution. What it cannot do is decide what a brand believes in, choose the issues it wants to stand for, or build on its behalf the slow accumulation of reputation that gives weight to what it says. AI amplifies distinctiveness where distinctiveness exists. And just as faithfully, it amplifies emptiness where there is none.

This is where the debate sparked by Sorrell turns against his own formula. He himself, after all, makes much the same point when he reminds us that brands are what make the difference, and that they are built by bringing together strategy, creativity, production and media. The companies that matter ten years from now will not be those that have best industrialised their content production: everyone will be able to do that, meaning it will no longer set anyone apart. They will be the companies that understood early on that they needed to stop chasing volume and start investing in capital. Content has become abundant; authority remains scarce.

The goal is not to flood the Internet. It is to leave a mark. That is the moment when a brand stops being merely visible and becomes memorable.

In the Age of AI, What Remains Is Editorial Capital/In the Age of AI What Remains Is Editorial Capital/In the Age of AI What Remains Is Editorial Capital