This week's Lions festival demonstrates brands are taking on -- and in many cases solving -- problems that governments, NGOs and other institutions cannot.

"The events of 2020 and 2021 have elevated the role of brands," P&G's Marc Pritchard asserts.

Political action committees, or PACs, now represent one of the biggest ad categories in the United States, up there with retail, automotive, pharma, etc., according to the latest edition of GroupM's advertising forecast. And it's about to get even bigger.

Democracy has a branding problem, and I think it has something to do with the root names of America's two political parties: Democratic and Republican.