An influencer gets a seat that used to belong to a broadcaster. A creator launches a product, gets bored of it, and moves on. One person appears in approximately every campaign going. And somewhere in the background, brands are trying to work out whether peop…

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Grace: Hey! Thanks so much for the continued support, we’re so glad you’re loving CS. I think what’s changed over the last year, is probably our understanding of how powerful, impactful and important this format is for both of us. For me, it’s 2 things really. The first being the power of long form, being able to express our thoughts freely without hooks and time constraints, develop our ideas as we write and in a format that allows for debate and nuance is so refreshing and different to the other content we put out there so that’s the first thing.

The second, and I think this is probably the least valued in the creator economy as a whole, is collaboration. Getting to collaborate and pick Jordan’s brain every single week is making me a better thinker, writer and expanding my knowledge. I would love to see more creators cross-collaborating. I think the real change a year on is the vision we see ahead for CS. This first year has really been about experimenting, seeing what works and what sticks and learning as we go. Exploring the different ways to grow through the different surfaces of the platform (notes, free articles v paid, recommendations - that was a huge unlock for us). We’ve now brought on our first permanent hire to the team as we invest back all of the revenue into the brand. The goal is to create a hub for all things brand and creator and that’s going to look like more than a weekly deep dive going forward. Eyes peeled!

Jordan: Firstly, thank you for following and subscribing.
Have my thoughts changed? No. I think Substack’s a good place to work. But it does have limitations, and one of the biggest is that you’re not in control of your data in the same way you are on another newsletter platform.

There’s a constant push and pull between those two temptations: do you take Substack’s inbuilt distribution, or do you go somewhere separate where you own more? Substack has a clout and a status to it that’s helpful from a narrative perspective — but ultimately that can still be limiting. Has anyone built and sold a Substack newsletter at scale? I’m not sure. I know people have done it with newsletters built on more independent platforms, where you have more ownership.

So long term, I don’t think Substack is the home for the run. Short term, it’s quite good for building the distribution — and if you can convert people onto other platforms over time once you’re at some scale, maybe that’s the best strategy.

I’m not wedded to it. I like it. There are some great Substacks and some great writers on the platform. But do I think it’s a forever home? No. Because it’s rented space, ultimately.

Grace: You’ve got to start somewhere so that people know where and how to categorise you. Our brains like to be able to label things, categorise them and then be able to find them easily in our memory. Without the labelling system, our brains are more likely to forget. So if you want to be memorable (create traction with an audience) I would suggest linking this to what you want to be known for, so this can take a little bit of work thinking bigger for where you want to go and want you want to be known for. It doesn’t need to be so niched down that your audience is super tiny, but you have to be recognizable for something. It could even be a feeling that you want to evoke, or a format that becomes recognisable. Either way what you stand for and how you show up needs to be something you can repeat until it sticks. And then as people spend time with you and know you for that thing, you can begin to introduce them to more things about you and expand how you show up online, what you stand for and the spaces you occupy.

Jordan: Obviously this one’s mainly aimed at Grace, but I’ll answer it briefly! I think the bigger question is the soul-searching piece. Who are you, and what do you want to do? What’s the trajectory for your career — what do you actually want to be doing in the real world? And then from there: how can content amplify that?

Being known for content alone isn’t really enough. There needs to be some substance in your real-world endeavours that informs what you talk about. That can change over time. But having a sense of this is what I want to ultimately be doing, and therefore this is what I want to be saying — and then you communicate that — is a good way round it. It’s just making sure it’s rightly ordered.

Otherwise it’s easy to fall into the lure of doing this thing or that thing without having the real-world credibility, or the purpose, to back it up.

Grace: Thanks so much for the kind words. We love it here! I think what’s easier than trying to identify a person out of thin air, is starting instead with the problem you’re trying to solve. Usually this comes from a personal problem that you don’t feel like the market solves for you, or it’s something someone you know has experienced and you want to solve for. The same goes for content, it doesn’t have to be a physical product. And usually when you identify that, you can then quite clearly see the person you’re trying to solve for. Maybe you want to create joyful content in a world where everything seems quite depressing, so it’s daily ‘happy news’ updates, well the person you’re creating for is someone desperately seeking a little sprinkle of hope and joy in their day. Or maybe it’s more specific and it’s a multi-vitamin in a sachet form because you’re sick of taking 10 different tablets every morning and you want a drinkable solution - well you’re speaking to the people who have that same problem.

At this stage, you don’t need to niche down by age or gender or demographics, because you’re speaking to a group categorised by a shared problem instead which is more powerful than a demographic. I think this is behind what we’re seeing across socials right now which is the rise of the ‘micro-culture’ - whereby groups are formed on shared interests and shared problems, as opposed to bio-metrics!

What I would suggest however is having a really clear image of the person you’re trying to reach in your mind. When I create content whether for me, an individual or a brand, I’m always thinking about one person who I want to speak to.

Jordan: Firstly, thank you for the very kind words on the newsletter! A few thoughts on this. Knowing your avatar is something that will change over time. It might change based on what you’re interested in, what you want to be building — that will shift. So it’s actually hard sometimes to build for too much of a specific avatar.

As time’s gone on, I’d actually think more in terms of value versus avatar. If you’re a brand, you’ll have a customer you’re trying to reach. But as a creator making content, it’s more somebody who is interested in X, or somebody who wants to know more about Y — versus being too hemmed down. Sometimes the avatar can be an assumption that doesn’t have much backing it up in reality.

It’s difficult to pin down exactly who you’re speaking to if what you want to talk about changes and has variety in it. And it could also limit what you do.

Grace: I usually look for 2 signals. 1 - it feels like you’re building compounding momentum that is rooted in your purpose or why. If every day you feel like you’re edging towards your reason for creating / doing, then you’re on the right track. The 2nd is traction. Traction being stickiness with an audience, DMs asking more questions, people coming back. Whatever it looks like for you, in the early days the signs can be small and light, but it shows promise and potential. If you’re not feeling traction, and you don’t feel like your content is laddering up to your why and instead floating around in the wind a little, shake things up. The most important and critical thing you can do in the early days is continuously experiment. If you have strong belief in your why, then keep experimenting with the format, the product, the concepts until that traction starts to form.

Jordan: When it comes to making content, the right track is more — it should be a process of test, learn, test, learn, find what works, then double down. Then test, learn, test, learn, find what works, double down again.

But it’s a process in which the process is itself the track. The first mark of success is the fact that you’re doing it, that you’re communicating, that you’re creating. And then over time you’ll have green shoots that come.

You need to define for yourself what success looks like, and what good looks like — and that needs to govern and lead the way, rather than being dictated to by comparison, looking over your shoulder.

So my instinct would be to reframe what the right track is: knowing that you’re doing it and keeping going is the right track. Because if you’re showing up, you’re already winning. It may just take longer than you’re assuming. But the right track is that you’re learning how to communicate — and that’s a process that will take time.

Thank you again, everyone, for submitting your questions. Keep an eye out for this weekly segment, and keep asking away, we’ll answer as many as we can! We are so thankful for this community, and want to give back as much as we can. Thanks for reading and being here.

Yours,

Jordan and Grace

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We are heading into the end of the month, and everything is moving at pace. Three stories in this issue, and they are all the same story: who gets to reach an audience directly, and who is trying to legislate their way back into the room.

It is going to be a fun end of the year. I can tell you that much.

The prominence emergency - they want to force their way into your feed

What happened: On 23 June 2026, the government published a Green Paper — Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media — proposing a “prominence regime” that could force social platforms and video-sharing sites like YouTube to push content from designated public service broadcasters (BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, S4C, Channel 5) higher up in feeds and recommendations. It’s sold as a fix for news and misinformation — but the Media Act prominence rules it builds on already cover every programme in a public service app, not just news. The public consultation is open until 31 August 2026. YouTube has already emailed UK creators warning it could be made to “put some channels above others,” under its #KeepYouTubeYours campaign.

GRACE: If they win prominence, you lose it, and that’s the whole point.

Let me put this in the terms that actually matter to everyone reading this, because we write for creators and brands, and this is not an abstract policy debate for us. It is a direct threat to your reach and your revenue. A feed is a fixed amount of space. There is no version of “we’re going to force this content higher” that doesn’t also mean “we’re going to push other content lower.” So when the government proposes guaranteeing broadcasters a spot near the top, be very clear about who occupies the seat they’re taking. It’s you. The creator who built an audience one upload at a time. The brand that spent real budget on a creator partnership expecting it to land in front of people. Prominence for them is, by mathematical necessity, deranking for you.

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to another issue of Community Service, as we recover *just about* from the devastating World Cup week for England. It feels like a very British way to end. Lots of disappointment, everyone getting angry at the team and the manager and so on. What’s new? Anyway. We move.

Grace:

Although England may have left us with a 3rd place ribbon, they left us with some truly killer content - which we’ve broken down for you in today’s newsletter too. Really analysing why it’s worked so well for ya and what we can learn.

This week we’ve got all the things you need to know in the world of creators, media and marketing.

So let’s get into it, starting with the MOST painful story of the week….

STOP ASKING SMALL BUSINESSES FOR FREE STUFF!!!!

JORDAN: The value-in-kind era is DONE. We’re past it. We’re done.

In case you missed it on Instagram this week, Rich Myers, founder of Get Baked, posted an email from the team behind The Voice asking for free cakes for their talent dressing rooms and green rooms. No payment, but exposure to their “highly influential coaches and presenters”. He replied, very firmly, that they could do one. Then he posted the whole thing.

The response was huge. And the sentiment, overwhelmingly, from people sharing his reply alongside the Daily Mail reaching out for comment and ITV scrambling to make good, tells you everything. There is a pent-up frustration among small business owners. Not small accounts. Get Baked has a big account. Small independent businesses who get approached for value in kind constantly. Influencers looking to stay at hotels for free. Big institutions with plenty of money asking small businesses to contribute for, quote unquote, exposure.

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We are back from Cannes. Out of the frying pan and into the London fryer, because it is somehow just as hot here. As you saw in the last issue, Grace and I were fortunate enough to share a panel at Cannes, but we were both so busy we barely saw each other beyond that. So we’re coming back down to earth in London, and there’s been plenty to talk about this week.

The BIG Debate: Does Zoella owe us an update?

The BIG Takeaway: The Sky–ITV deal is a decline signal for broadcast

The BIG Win: The World Cup clips are a masterclass in personality

The BIG Lesson: LADbible just learned the internet’s hardest lesson

One to Watch: A YouTube show just earned an Emmy nomination

Let’s get into it.

THE BIG DEBATE

Does Zoella owe her audience an update?

What happened: There's been a lot of opinion flying around about the quote-unquote disappearance of Zoella. She hasn't posted since the end of last year. The Sun ran its big piece asking what's behind it all, and reasonable people, including the Shameless podcast hosts, have argued that when you've built a career and a fortune from an audience, you owe that audience an update on your life.

Jordan: I don’t agree.

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We’re live from Cannes, so sorry for the delay! Grace and I have been living life on the Croisette, soaking up the incredible Creator First energy that’s come to the beach this year. And as of writing, we’ve just wrapped a session together on the Sidemen x Arcade x Virgin Media O2 partnership that took place earlier in the year.

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We hope you’re doing wonderful out there in the world of creators, media and marketing. Big week on this end.

Grace has been over in America for her first American speaking gig, which is a huge milestone. Congratulations, Grace. I’ll let her tell you about it when she’s back!

I’ve been running around doing all sorts, but it’s been a good one. Plenty to get into, so let’s get straight into it.

The under-16 social media ban. Will it matter to brands?

What happened: We have to talk about it. On 15 June, the government confirmed it: the UK will ban under-16s from social media, following Australia and a growing list of countries doing the same. It covers Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, though not WhatsApp, Signal or YouTube Kids. Legislation is expected before Christmas, with the rules coming into force in Spring 2027.

Jordan: I’m not going to use this to argue whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, because it’s a complicated one. What I want to talk about is the impact on creativity and on marketing. Is there going to be one? My honest read is that there probably won’t be much of an impact at all.

The reality is that in Australia, where the ban has actually come into place, the workarounds have been so widespread that the vast majority of the people who shouldn’t be on these platforms are still on them. Enforcement is genuinely hard unless the government also bans VPNs, and that would cause real tumult here. Banning VPNs reads as a signal of authoritarianism, so I can’t see it. On that basis, I’d expect business as usual.

The one thing worth watching is how you show up offline. This ban might end up being a nudge for young people to spend more time with their friends in real life, and everyone can get behind that. So the question for any brand or creator is your life proposition. How are you showing up physically? Are you producing experiences that aren’t built for social first?

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Hello, and welcome back to another issue of Community Service.

Great week in our world, as it ever is. Hopefully, you have had a wonderful one too. Thank you for reading and diving in with us as we cover everything you need to know in the world of creators, media and marketing.

Let’s dive in.

This week’s issue:

The Yap Economy Is Here (And It Just Made $1.2M in 24 Hours)

Instagram Just Launched a Subscription. But Is Meta Missing the Point?

The World Cup’s Biggest Broadcaster Might Be a Streamer.

The Creator Economy Has a $37 Billion Problem.

4 stories, 15+ major takeaways.

The Yap Economy Is Here (And It Just Made $1.2M in 24 Hours)

What happened: There is a really interesting thing happening right now: the rise of the yap economy. Creators are using the power of yapping to build a deep connection with an audience, and it is working.

Jordan: So, what is a yap video? It is the rawest possible form of talking to camera. Charismatic, unscripted, no polish, no production. It is the opposite of the premium talking-to-camera video that has dominated for the last couple of years, especially on Instagram. And people are getting sick of premium.

The case study here is Jessi Jean. She went from zero to 400,000 followers in about five months, then ran something called the Yap On Camera Challenge, a $297 product, and reportedly pulled in $1.2 million from it in under two weeks. The number is gross, before fees, refunds and tax, but it is still enormous. The challenge itself is a six-week programme that teaches people how to make raw, authentic, talk-to-camera content. She has done incredibly well.

Grace: It would be amiss to talk about anyone other than Jessi when it comes to the art of the YAP. And if you are somehow not on a first-name basis after the virality she’s sparked this week, we’re of course talking about Jessi Jean. The creator who built an audience, then built the product, and then delivered $1.2 million in sales, in 24 hours to a waitlist of over 3500 people. Oh, and she started 6 months ago.

Well, that’s what social media would have you believe. That’s what’s sparked the insane level of conversation. Of course, the reality is always a little murkier.

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Busy week in Grace and Jordanland. We crossed paths and were so close yet so far. Both of us were at SXSW, on top of a run of other events. It is a busy world right now, but everything is going well, and we are firing on all cylinders. There is a running joke that Grace and I are basically a male and female version of each other, which means we can be in two places at once. Very true, and very useful.

A few stories caught our eye this week, and I will run through them with some bigger takes on what is moving in the space. As ever, this is your essential briefing on the world of creators, media and marketing.

Let’s dive in.

This week’s edition:

FIVE STORIES, 20+ MAJOR TAKEAWAYS.

THE BIG QUESTION: Has Social Media Killed Love Island?
THE BIG LESSON: YouTube Creators Now Command Mainstream Attention
THE BIG VALUE: The Audience Economy Just Raised $35 Million. THE BIG WIN: YouTube Filmmakers Just Beat Hollywood
THE BIG TAKEAWAY: The World Cup Content Is Proof People Follow People, Not Broadcasts

THE BIG QUESTION

Has Social Media Killed Love Island?

The question: First up, a controversial one. Does anyone in the UK actually care about Love Island anymore?

Love Island fatigue is real, and the numbers are brutal. Back in 2019, before TikTok ate the culture, the show was pulling more than six million viewers a night at its peak. The 2022 summer launch did 2.4 million. By the 2023 summer launch it was down to 1.3 million overnight, a million viewers gone in a single year. Same format, same villa, same outcomes. After enough seasons of that, an audience stops showing up.

Jordan: For me, the deeper problem is discovery. As feeds fragment, it gets harder every year for a show like this to reach the people who once found it by default. Television leans on social media as its main route to an audience. ITV will tell you Love Island has racked up hundreds of millions of streams, and that is real, but raw reach is not the same as a room full of people who actually care. When attention is this scattered, amplification on its own runs out of road.

So here is the take. Love Island keeps sliding for as long as it leans on social to amplify rather than building spaces it actually owns. There is a real opportunity here that nobody in legacy TV seems to want to take. Discord servers, paid membership, live community chats, real-world events, anywhere fans can gather around the show and around each other. Love Island does not need more promotion. It needs a community, and those are two completely different things.

Grace: I, for one, haven’t ‘watched’ Love Island for maybe 4 years, in terms of sitting down, tuning into the nightly episodes. But I have ‘watched’ through TikTok, podcasts, and social reaction clips enough to keep up in conversations in the group chats. And I think a lot of people would say the same, you know, the classic ‘oh yeah, I’m watching that! Well, via clips on TikTok, but same thing!’ and actually, for the brand trying to drive revenue through advertising on the core product, it’s not the same thing at all. Where social was previously a tool for discovery to drive to the long-form destination, it has replaced the destination entirely.

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Hope you’ve had a lovely week in the sunshine. Hope you haven’t melted.

But in the spirit of bringing the heat, we’re going to talk today about a spicy topic. Something which I’ve been mulling over for quite a while now. This tension I’m feeling with social media currently, and what seems like, or feels like at least, a decline in confidence around the medium itself.

Now, yes, I understand that a lot of our world, a lot of our job, really, and why you’re here subscribing, is because of our insights on social media and us being in the space. But what’s interesting, and I don’t know if you’ve felt it too, is that it feels as if the whole medium itself of social is under a lot of strain. And the strain seems to be coming, as we know, from two things.

One, more and more people are trying to make content and trying to stand out as creators.

And two, AI is turning platforms into feeds of homogenous slop.

Lets get into it!

Jordan: The numbers back it up. 56% of social media users now report seeing AI slop on social media often or very often. 83% see it at least sometimes. So this isn’t a fringe thing. This is most people now.

Which has led to, for me, and I’m sure for others, a decline in confidence in the whole thing. And I’m not alone in feeling that. 35% of users say their trust in social has decreased over the last 12 months. 

And I wanted to talk today about what’s coming, which feels like it’s going to be this great digital detoxing, whereby people end up retreating into different spaces. And what could those spaces be? So the question today is what could those spaces be, and how could you, as a brand, as a creator, as a marketer, get ahead of the game and start prepping for the third spacing, the great third spacing, which seems to be on the horizon.

So I wanted to frame this with an article by Ian McEwan, the famed author of Atonement and Amsterdam and his other classics, who talked about the dumbing down, as we know, of creativity by virtue of smartphones. Basically, tech that homogenises our work. It makes everything sound and look the same. And his point is exactly that, that the only way really to have true creativity is solitude, is space. And that’s missing today when everyone is so glued to their phones.

And one line of his that really stuck with me was this:

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Solo week this week - Grace is doing diplomatic business abroad as part of the UK trade mission in LA, sitting in rooms with YouTube, ITV, and some of the biggest names in business in the country. Just a signal of Grace being the absolute superstar she is. Grace Andrews for PM at this rate. Anyhow, one for another day.

So I’m taking the mantle. It’s been a really busy couple of days because Arcade have been hosting the Creative First stage at The Podcast Show 2026. Packed-out talks, brilliant guests, loads of ground covered. I wanted to give you a debrief on some of my favourite parts.

When you’re hosting, you don’t always actually get to absorb the insights — you’re driving the conversation rather than listening to it. So I’m picking three people who’ve uniquely inspired me over the last two days, and the nuggets I’ve taken away.

Let’s dive in.

THE TAKEAWAYS:

GEM ONE: The YouTube packaging formula nobody is using properly

GEM TWO: Community has to be passion-first, not commercial- first

GEM THREE: Why niching down is now a superpower

THE BIG QUESTION: Where is podcasting actually going?

THE TAKEAWAYS

Gem one: the YouTube packaging formula nobody is using properly (expertise + bold claim)

First panel after my keynote, with Calum McIntyre and Ruth Fitzsimmons, Director of Digital at Bauer. The talk was on packaging.

YouTube packaging is an ethereal mystery for most, but it matters more than ever. YouTube is now where everyone’s actually discovering podcasts, with over a billion monthly viewers on the platform. The title and the thumbnail are doing more work than they ever have.

Calum’s a YouTube strategist, and he broke down some really interesting analysis on what’s working and what’s not. The one that stood out to me: when you’ve got an expert or a big guest on the podcast, the formula seems to be expertise + bold claim. Paired with text-led thumbnails that lean into the claim.

His example was Andy Wilman, producer of Top Gear. You lead with the expertise. If they’re an incredibly well-known name, you lead with the name. If they’re an expert, you lead with the expertise — “Top Gear producer says X” — and then the bold claim does the rest.

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This week feels like one giant signal.

Across media, politics, branding and entertainment, the same pattern keeps appearing: audiences are rejecting polish, passivity and manufactured relevance in favour of things that feel real, community-led and culturally coherent.

We’re watching YouTube evolve from a content platform into the new television industry in real time. We’re watching creators outperform celebrities because audiences trust people more than they trust institutions. We’re watching premium brands realise that reach without alignment is becoming increasingly meaningless. And we’re watching public figures discover, sometimes painfully,that authenticity is no longer optional in the social media era.

This issue gives you a bunch of insight into the shifts happening across creators, media, culture and marketing right now, and where the opportunities are opening underneath them.

As ever, we’d love your feedback. What’s landing? What isn’t? What do you want more of? Which stories should we go deeper on? Community Service is becoming sharper every week because of those conversations.

Let’s dive in.

This week’s edition:

FOUR BIG STORIES, 20+ MAJOR TAKEAWAYS.

THE BIG LESSON: Authenticity Is Now A Competitive Advantage. THE BIG STORY: YouTube Is Becoming The New Television Industry
THE BIG SHIFT: Celebrity Culture Is Quietly Contracting
THE BIG QUESTION: Are Brands Measuring The Wrong Things?

THE BIG LESSON

Keir Starmer vs Zohran Mamadani: The Authenticity Gap

What happened: This week became a fascinating case study in modern leadership, personal branding and the creator-age expectation of authenticity.

In the UK, Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure after disastrous local election results saw Labour lose more than 1,400 councillors, with around 80 MPs reportedly calling for him to step down. His approval ratings have collapsed less than two years into government.

Meanwhile in New York, Zohran Mamdani continues to build strong public approval despite running politically divisive policies, with polling consistently describing him as personable, authentic and relatable.

The contrast between the two feels bigger than politics. It’s a lesson in what audiences now expect from anyone leading publicly - whether that’s a politician, creator, founder or CEO.

Jordan: I’ll take this one as I’ve been thinking about it a LOT this week. You’ve probably seen that Keir Starmer is in the mud, and I think it’s worth pulling apart why, because there’s a lesson in it for anyone building a personal brand, running a business, or trying to lead anything at all publicly.

Around 80 of his own Labour MPs have publicly called on him to step down, which on its own is extraordinary, and the trigger was last week’s local elections, which were catastrophic for the party. Labour lost more than 1,400 councillors in a single set of results. His personal net approval is now at minus 45, the government’s sits at minus 49, and that puts Labour almost as unpopular as the Conservatives were just before they lost the 2024 general election. All of this less than two years in.

When you look at what the polling is actually saying, and at what canvassers have been hearing on doorsteps up and down the country, the answer keeps coming back to the same simple thing. He’s simply not liked. It’s personal more than professional.

And the lesson in that, for any leader, any CEO, anyone building a personal brand of any kind, is identical, because the principle doesn’t change just because he happens to run a country rather than a company.

You cannot fake authenticity anymore, and I think this is the single most important shift to understand right now. Voters, consumers, audiences, an electorate, whatever you want to call them. If you aren’t real, they will reject you, and they’ll do it fast. This is a direct product of the social media and creator age, because politicians used to get away with being scripted, polished, formal, low-personality, when the filter for spotting fakery just wasn’t sharp enough to catch them out. But audiences have now been trained by years of short-form content, by creators, by content that lives or dies on whether it feels real, and so they spot artifice instantly and punish it just as quickly. And this is Starmer’s big problem.

If you’re building a personal brand, this is the thing that matters more than almost anything else. You can have the best politics in the world, the best strategy, the best product, the best company, but if you can’t communicate it as a real human being, none of it lands.

Mamdani is the counter-example.

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A couple of great stories this week, and a couple of deeper topics. It’s been another busy one in our world, and hopefully in yours too. Grace and I, well, I’ll speak for myself, but I suspect she’d agree,are tired, busy, booked, and loving life.

Hopefully, this issue gives you a bunch of insight into the things going on and worth knowing in the world of creators, media and marketing.

As ever, we’d love your feedback. What’s landing? What isn’t? What do you want more of? How deep do you want us to go? All of it is incredibly valuable as we try to shape Community Service into an essential read for anyone navigating the industry we work in.

Let’s dive in.

This week’s edition:

2 BIG STORIES, 16 MAJOR TAKEAWAYS.

THE BIG STORY: The Creator Economy Has A Value Problem

THE BIG CHANGE: Amazon, Oprah, The Kelces: Why Every Creator Needs To Think Bigger Than Content

THE PICK: Shameless: A return to pragmatism

THE BIG STORY

The Creator Economy Has A Value Problem

What happened: The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive into where creator marketing money is actually going, and the numbers paint a very different picture from the version of the creator economy most people imagine. Smaller and DTC brands accounted for over 94% of the 150,000+ sponsored creator videos on YouTube last year, while major household advertisers are still only a fraction of the market despite increasing spend significantly. Meanwhile, creator marketing spend in the U.S. is projected to hit $43.9 billion this year.

Jordan: I hate to be the guy who says I told you so. But I’ve been saying this for a long time, and it’s bittersweet to see some honesty about influencer marketing finally landing. The picture is very different from the one most people assume.

The WSJ has just put real numbers on it. Smaller and DTC brands accounted for over 94% of the 150,000+ sponsored creator videos on YouTube last year. Household-name advertisers grew their YouTube sponsorships 189% in 2025. They’re still a sliver of the actual market. General Mills, Salesforce and SiriusXM hadn’t sponsored a single YouTube creator before last year. Activision was the biggest household-name spender on YouTube and still got out-sponsored five-to-one by Ground News and BetterHelp. 48% of marketers now call creators a “must buy,” second only to paid search and social ads. The demand is there, the big brands are arriving, and the creators are still starving.

Grace: If you can’t speak brand, you’re leaving money on the table. U.S. advertisers are expected to spend $43.9 billion on creator content this year. And yet the brands dominating creator deals aren’t the household names you’d expect.

After reading the WSJ’s latest deep dive into where creator budgets are actually going, something’s been bugging me. BetterHelp and Ground News each appeared in creator videos over 3,000 times last year. Activision, one of gaming’s biggest names, managed 579. The brands winning at creator marketing aren’t Nike or Unilever. They’re digital-native companies who figured out how to make creator marketing work as a business.

So why are the bigger legacy budgets still sitting on the sidelines? I think it comes down to a language problem. And creators are part of the reason it hasn’t been solved.

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Hello, and welcome to another issue of Community Service!

This week’s stories come almost entirely out of the girlies’ TikTok algorithm, full disclosure from Jordan - he had no idea what was going on (sorry Jordan, welcome to my algorithm!!!)

But we’ve dug into these worlds, and they’re genuinely fascinating. The Acquired Style bachelorette in particular, which, honestly, looked like a great time. I was on it.

As ever, we’re covering what’s happening in creator, media, and marketing through a creator-first lens. Translating it into things you can actually use to level up what you’re doing in the space. That’s the service. That’s why we’re here.

If you enjoy it, share it with someone who’d get something out of it. And we’d love to hear what you think, replies, questions, hot takes, all welcome.

Onto the issue.

This week’s edition:

THE BIG STORY: Launches are Dead, Worlds Win - The Brands Winning Beyond Launch Day

THE BIG TREND: TikTok Took Reality TV’s Job: How Creator Worlds Became Entertainment

THE BIG CHANGE: TV Is Recruiting The Internet - Why Networks Are Casting Creators

Let’s get into it.

THE BIG STORY

Launches are Dead, Worlds Win

What happened: Austin Suitor shared a carousel this week that perfectly captured what has changed in brand culture.

The old model was simple: build a product, announce it, run paid ads, hope it lands. The new model is different: build a world, then invite people in.

Jordan: I thought Austin absolutely nailed it. People do not really want launches anymore. They want mystery. They want narrative. They want to feel like something is already happening and they are being invited into it. That is why Justin Bieber’s Skylrk works. Rhode works. SKIMS works. Coachella works.

None of these brands behave like they are waiting for a big reveal. They feel continuous. Like one long party where the DJ never stops, people keep arriving, and there is always something happening in the corner worth paying attention to.

That is a completely different operating model to the old campaign mindset of building to one big moment, posting it everywhere, then going quiet again.

The implication for anyone building a brand today: you don’t need a social media manager. You need a world builder. Someone whose whole job is the ongoing texture around the brand - touch point after touch point, experience after experience, across every space the audience lives in. Content is one expression of that, but it’s not the whole job.

Grace: You know, on your point there about the ‘social media manager’, I’ve actually been discussing that title a lot recently and I think it’s a really old school title that’s pretty redundant in 2026 for the reasons you share above. If you think about it, the title means to manage channels.

Traditionally that would be because the marketing team would create the campaign, the ad, the assets, whatever it was, and pass it over to the social media manager as the final batton to write the caption, schedule and reply to comments. That’s not how social works anymore. A lot of brands are gearing their setup much more closely to that of a media agency or business where social, content and media are at the heart centre. Long gone are the days where the social team were the final batton, today they are the culture translators, the trend creators, the the discovery geniuses, the community builders, the strategists and the creator all in one.

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Hello friends, and welcome back to Community Service!

As always, our goal with today’s debrief is to keep you dangerously informed.

Whether you’re a creator, founder, brand builder or a marketing nerd like us, we’ve got you covered.

A lot in here for you. As ever, share your thoughts, your comments, your ideas, anything you think is worth us covering - and we hope you enjoy it.

This week’s edition:

THE BIG STORY: Emma Grede’s Marketing Masterclass: Is Provocation the New Persuasion?

THE BIG TREND: Alex Cooper VS Alix Earle: The creator economy’s biggest myth exposed

THE BIG CHANGE: We Need to Talk - Access now belongs to trust, not institutions

Let’s get into it.

THE BIG STORY

Emma Grede’s Marketing Masterclass: Is Provocation the New Persuasion?

What happened: Emma Grede’s book tour has flooded the feed, driven by a series of highly opinionated clips that have sparked widespread conversation across podcasts and social.

Jordan: The first story this week is about the unstoppable Emma Grede, who’s recently gone on her book tour, which you and everyone with a phone will have no doubt seen. She has FLOODED the feed. It’s everywhere. What’s fascinating about the way this rollout has been executed is the firm and deeply direct set of ideas and opinions that are underpinning the appearances. And they’re ruffling feathers.

Grace: You can see how intentional it is. The sharpest lines became the clips, the clips became the discourse, and the discourse became the marketing. From a pure awareness standpoint, it has been hugely effective.

Jordan: Exactly. We’ve had two big ones so far. One about the necessity of physical presence in the office to get ahead. The other is about being a three-hour mum on weekends, but truthfully, forget the opinions. That’s irrelevant to the lesson here. The point is you’re talking about them. You’re reacting. You’re feeling something.

Grace: There is a trade-off, though. The harder question is whether that kind of exposure converts, because conversation and conversion are not the same thing. If you do 20 plus podcasts, your own show, YouTube, a tour, and a full press run all at once, there is a risk you give the audience too much for free. They get the thesis, the stories, the strongest opinions, the emotional arc. And what is left to buy? The best campaigns still leave people wanting more.

Jordan: And yet, the stuff that’s really flown and travelled is the divisive rhetoric. She’s done everything. Every podcast, every show, even Oprah. The clips that move are the ones that push. Which ultimately gets people buying a book.

Grace: It depends on what the campaign was actually designed to do. When I was at The Diary of a CEO, we saw experts drive huge book sales, so this is not to say that podcasts and book sales do not go hand in hand. But the nuance is in the shape of the funnel. Those were often single, high-impact moments. It felt like a discovery. People came away wanting more, and the book became the place to go deeper. That is very different from a saturation play where the author is suddenly everywhere at once.

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Issue #32 | Thursday, April 16th, 2026

Hello friends and welcome back to Community Service!

As always, our goal with today’s debrief is to keep you dangerously informed.

Whether you’re a creator, founder, brand builder or a marketing nerd like us, we’ve got you covered.

A lot in here for you. As ever, share your thoughts, your comments, your ideas, anything you think is worth us covering - and we hope you enjoy it.

This week’s edition:

THE BIG STORY: Why Bieber’s Coachella moment was bigger than a performance

THE BIG TREND: Why brands are quietly becoming TV studios

THE POST-MORTEM: Dua Lipa, Nespresso and the limits of star power

Let’s get into it.

THE BIG STORY

Bieber has layers - The performance that took over the internet and the ecosystem it sat upon

What happened: Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance dominated conversation for 24 hours. At the same time, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode launched a Bieber collection. Around them sat a wider ecosystem of culturally aligned brands across Coachella, all activating in the same window.

Grace: What stood out to me wasn’t scale or production, it was intimacy. It felt close in a way most festival performances don’t. Like you were being pulled back into an earlier version of Bieber’s world, not watching a polished version of it from a distance.

What made it so effective was how intimate it all felt. The camera angles, the stripped-back setup, the lack of overproduction, the raw creative direction — all of it created this feeling that you were suddenly back with the Bieber people first connected with years ago. It felt close. It felt familiar. It felt like being let back into his world.

And that matters, because nostalgia is one of the most powerful emotional tools in marketing. When you can remind people how they felt about you at the beginning, you are not just asking for attention in the present. You are reconnecting them to a version of themselves that already loved you. You are making them feel like they still have a place in your story.

Jordan: Yeah,100%.

And at the same time, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode was launching the Bieber collection, and that is where it gets especially interesting. The product language and the performance language were speaking to each other. Rhode’s world is already clean, minimal and culturally sharp, and this performance carried a similar energy. It had that same stripped-back quality. That same restraint. That same sense of cool that does not need to shout.

So suddenly, you are not just watching a performance. You are absorbing a full creative narrative across multiple touchpoints.

Grace: And my marketing brain immediately went there, because this did not feel isolated. It felt connected to everything else happening around him that weekend.

Then you widen the lens even further, and you see the bigger machine at work. Around Coachella, there was this whole Bieber-Kardashian ecosystem in motion. Khloe’s Kloud Popcorn. Kourtney’s Lemme Vitamins. Kendall’s 818 Tequila. Kylie’s rebranded Sprinter Hydration. Brand after brand, all showing up within the same orbit, speaking to the same audience, feeding the same sense of relevance and desirability.

Read more

Hello friends, and welcome back to Community Service!

As always, our goal with today’s debrief is to keep you dangerously informed.

Whether you’re a creator, founder, brand builder or a marketing nerd like us, we’ve got you covered.

A lot in here for you. As ever, share your thoughts, your comments, your ideas, anything you think is worth us covering - and we hope you enjoy it.

This week’s edition:

THE BIG STORY: Wiz x Wiz Khalifa (B2B is still marketing to humans)

THE BIG TREND: Rhode x The Biebers (how to build brand heat through simultaneity)

THE BIG TAKEAWAY: TBPN sold for nine figures with 70K subscribers (quality beats scale)

THE PICK: Raising Chelsea (YouTube vlogs meets reality TV)

Let’s go.

THE BIG FEATURE

Wiz x Wiz Khalifa Proves B2B Doesn’t Have to Be Boring

What happened: AI cloud company Wiz partnered with Wiz Khalifa for an unexpected, entertaining campaign that amassed over 300K views on YouTube in less than a week.

Grace: I’m not sure about you, but almost every week I get a DM or someone asks me on stage “but I work in B2B and this would never work.”

My answer is always the same: you are still marketing to humans.

And if anything, the lack of creativity in the B2B sector poses a huge opportunity for innovation and differentiation - something consumer brands are fighting for on a daily basis.

That’s why I loved seeing this campaign moment from AI cloud company Wiz this week. Partnering with Wiz Khalifa for an unexpected, entertaining bit that has amassed over 300K views on YouTube in less than a week. It’s such a good example of what happens when a B2B brand understands that attention is earned the same way anywhere else: by making something people want to watch.

Celebrity helped, of course. It gave the campaign immediate recognition and made it more culturally fluent from the start. But the bigger point is that it didn’t feel like a typical B2B ad trying to explain its way into relevance. It felt built to travel - to be shared, talked about, and sent around precisely because it was surprising.

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Hello friends, and welcome back to Community Service!

As always, our goal with today’s debrief is to keep you dangerously informed.

Whether you’re a creator, founder, brand builder or a marketing nerd like us, we’ve got you covered.

It’s Issue 30!

To celebrate, we’re letting all of our wonderful subs access the full edition this week.

30 weeks of debriefing the creator, content and brand world every Wednesday for you.

We’re absolutely loving pulling this briefing together for you each week, innovating on the format (hello new weekly debates!) and bringing you the insight our brains can’t stop thinking about. We have hired 2x team members and have huge plans here, so thank you for being here and we can’t wait to grow Community Service for you and with you. We love to hear your takes, thoughts, questions, and what you want to see.

Don’t forget you can comment at the end!

This week there’s a lot to get into:

A creator is betting millions on a show that’s launching to 11,000 subscribers. The Sidemen just hit the Netflix global top five. And there’s a question we keep coming back to - whether AI is about to make most content worthless, or whether it’s about to make the best content more valuable than ever.

Ready?

THE BIG FEATURE

A Creator Just Bet Millions on 11,000 Subscribers (Is This Genius or Madness?)

What happened: Alex Cooper is making a $3-5 million bet.

Jordan: For the last few years we’ve been saying the same thing in different ways. The most interesting shift in entertainment isn’t happening in a boardroom in Burbank. It’s happening on YouTube.

Creators are becoming commissioners. Funding shows themselves. Distributing them. Using the audience response as leverage when they eventually walk into a streamer - rather than walking in cold with a pitch and a prayer.

The clearest example of this working - and yes, we’re close to it - is Inside by the Sidemen. Creator-funded, creator-distributed, massive numbers, genuine cultural noise, and ultimately Netflix came calling. The deal was different to a traditional commission. Of course it was. The IP already had a life before Netflix touched it. That’s entirely the point. You’re not selling a concept. You’re selling something that already exists and already has an audience behind it.

Alex Cooper is now making a version of that same bet. Unwell Winter Games lands April 6th. Sixteen creators - some of the biggest names in the reality space - in a luxury Alpine chalet, four episodes, mental and physical challenges. Self-funded, self-distributed, debuting on the Unwell YouTube channel.

Which has 11,000 subscribers.

The ambition is real. The talent bill will be serious money - these aren’t emerging names. I’d put the budget somewhere between $3-5 million, probably closer to the top of that given American production rates. Maybe more. That’s a significant amount of capital parked behind a channel with no established audience.

The logic is there though. Build it, put it out, let the audience response do the talking, take it to a streamer with something to show. That’s a stronger position than a deck and a meeting. I get it.

But the thing that made Inside undeniable was that the distribution already existed. The Sidemen’s audience didn’t appear when the show did. It had been built over fifteen years. You can’t manufacture that. Alex will get behind it, the talent will post, there’ll be noise - but does that noise convert to sustained YouTube viewership on a channel that didn’t exist six months ago? That’s the bit I keep getting stuck on.

It’s also unlikely to be brand safe, which tells you everything about the exit strategy. This isn’t built for ad revenue. It’s built to be acquired. That’s fine - but it means the success metric isn’t a view count. It’s whether a streamer decides the package is worth buying. And that’s harder to predict.

I’m skeptical that the numbers will be there. But I’m also aware that Alex Cooper’s name carries real weight and sometimes that changes the maths. Either way - this is the first of many. The model is only going to grow.

Grace: I think the question here is more about what’s behind the decision. Is it a big acquisition play or a proof of concept?

Jordan’s right: the Sidemen didn’t just have a format, they had distribution. That’s the part people keep trying to skip. Audience is not a marketing line item you bolt on at the end. It is the asset.

What Alex Cooper is doing still makes sense to me, though. Not because the Unwell channel is already big, but because this is clearly a proof-of-concept play. She knows cultural capital, social-first formats and how to capture attention better than most.

Where I slightly differ is that I don’t think success here has to mean enormous native YouTube numbers. If the show creates enough conversation, enough clips, enough press, and enough evidence that the cast chemistry works, that may be enough to open the next door. Sometimes the first season is less a hit and more a very expensive pitch. And Unwell have the production backing to pull something like this off.

The action for creators and media brands is to be honest about which business you’re in. If you want a sustainable channel business, you need repeat viewing, audience habit and a format people come back to. If you want an acquisition play, you need a project that demonstrates clear demand and gives a partner confidence they can scale it. Those are related strategies, but they are not the same one. You have to know what you’re going after and build from there.

Your takeaways:

1. Distribution is the asset, not the format - Audience isn’t a marketing line item you add at the end - it’s the entire foundation

2. Know which business you’re in - Sustainable channel business needs repeat viewing and audience habit. Acquisition play needs proof of demand and evidence you can scale. They’re related strategies but not the same. Be honest about what you’re building toward

3. Sometimes the first season is an expensive pitch - If Unwell Winter Games creates conversation, clips, press and proves cast chemistry works, that might be enough to open the next door. Success doesn’t have to mean massive native YouTube numbers if the goal is proving concept to a streamer

THE BIG TREND

Inside Hit Netflix Global Top Five (The Formula Isn’t a Secret Anymore)

What happened: While we’re debating whether this model works in theory, we’ve got a fairly compelling data point sitting right in front of us. Inside has been number one on Netflix in the UK all week.

Jordan: While we’re debating whether this model works in theory, we’ve got a fairly compelling data point sitting right in front of us.

Inside has been number one on Netflix in the UK all week. Peaked at number five globally. Number one in multiple countries at once. By any reasonable measure, it’s the best-performing Sidemen project to date - and given what they’ve built, that means something.

The formula isn’t a secret. Creator plus their own distribution plus genuine creative ownership equals something audiences actually want. Because the connection between creator and audience wasn’t manufactured for the show. It was built over years, in public, one video at a time. The trust was already there before Netflix got involved.

Netflix has clearly worked this out, because on the complete other end of the content spectrum, Danny Go has just joined the platform. This follows MrBeast. This follows Ms Rachel. This is a pattern.

Netflix is going to the biggest kids YouTubers one by one and signing them. And the reason it works so cleanly is that the audience comes pre-packaged. Parents already know them. Parents already trust them. Netflix just adds another layer of safety that makes the decision even easier. Everyone wins.

The signal is the same no matter your category or audience size. Build on YouTube first. Not as a stepping stone. As your primary home. YouTube is where you prove your worth. Where you earn the right to be taken seriously somewhere else. If you don’t have that foundation, streamers have no particular reason to back you. You’re just another pitch.

Build on YouTube.

Grace: I’m all in on YouTube for this exact reason. It is the home base and the launchpad. I can’t quite explain the opportunities, network and relationships I’ve built from building there as a priority.

I also think the Netflix examples matter because they show this is not limited to one genre. It works in reality. It works in kids. It likely works anywhere the audience relationship is strong enough that the viewer feels they already know what they’re getting.

The practical read is that YouTube is no longer just where talent is discovered. It’s where leverage is built. That changes how creators should think about their channels. Your archive matters. Your consistency matters. The world-building matters. All of that becomes part of the case for why a platform, streamer or brand should take you seriously later.

So yes, build on YouTube - but build with intention. Don’t just chase spikes. Build repeatable trust. That’s the bit that travels.

Your takeaways:

1. YouTube is where leverage is built, not where talent is discovered - Inside proved it: 15 years of audience, creative ownership, pre-existing trust. Netflix didn’t discover the Sidemen, they bought proven demand. Your archive matters, your consistency matters, your world-building becomes the case for why platforms take you seriously

2. The formula works across every genre - Reality (Inside), kids (Danny Go, MrBeast, Ms Rachel). If the audience relationship is strong enough that viewers already know what they’re getting, streamers want it. The pattern is clear

3. Build with intention, not just for spikes - Don’t chase viral moments. Build repeatable trust. That’s what travels when you eventually take the conversation to streamers, brands or partners. YouTube is your primary home, not your stepping stone

Enjoying this so far? Hit the heart and drop your thoughts in the comments.

Leave a comment

THE BIG DEBATE

Will Content Lose Its Value in an AI-First World?

What happened: This one’s been sitting with us for a while. The hypothesis: we’re heading toward a genuine trust crisis with content. AI-generated material floods social to the point where audiences stop believing what they’re looking at. This triggers a flight to third spaces, online and offline, where trust can actually be verified. Social media as we’ve known it has, arguably, already peaked. Jordan is arguing no - content doesn’t lose its value. Grace is taking yes.

Jordan: No, Content Gets More Valuable (If You Stay Real)

There is more content being made right now than at any point in history. More tools, more access, more distribution. The volume is only going one way. And in that environment the thing that becomes rare - actually rare - is personality. Realness. The sense that there’s a human being on the other side who has something to say and is willing to say it without it being perfect.

Lo-fi, personality-led content is going to matter more. Not less. The creator who shows up raw, who doesn’t over-produce, who speaks directly - that person stands out in a way that’s much harder to ignore when everything around them is generated. The contrast does the work.

Will social become less trusted? Probably already is. But that doesn’t mean content loses its value - it means the value moves. Streaming, Twitch, Kick - spaces with some mechanism of liveness and verification - get more trusted as Instagram gets less so. The platforms will chase AI content short term because the engagement metrics look good. But audiences will get tired. They always do. And when they do, the creators who stayed real will have the most valuable audiences on the internet.

Inauthentic content loses its value. Not content. And for good creators that’s not a crisis. That’s the whole opportunity.

Grace: Yes, Content Loses Value (But Brand Ecosystems Win)

I think content does lose value in an AI-first world. Not all content. But content as a category? Absolutely.

Because once production becomes cheap, fast and infinite, the average piece of content stops being scarce. And when something is no longer scarce, it becomes less valuable. That is basic economics, and we’re already watching it happen in real time.

AI is about to flood every platform with material that is good enough: good enough visuals, good enough copy, good enough hooks, good enough videos. And “good enough” at scale is a serious problem. Not because audiences suddenly love it, but because it clogs the system. It lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. It makes discovery worse. It makes trust weaker. And it makes a huge amount of content functionally interchangeable.

That means the floor falls out first. The middle follows. The old value of simply making content - producing regularly, looking polished, playing the algorithm game - starts to collapse when machines can do all of that faster and cheaper.

So yes, content loses value.

But I also think the more useful way to look at this is to zoom out. Content is only one touchpoint. And if that touchpoint becomes easy to mass-produce, then the real question is: what can’t be?

What can’t be replicated so easily is the feeling people get when they enter your world. The consistency of your taste. The clarity of your point of view. The trust built across every platform where someone experiences your brand. Your voice in the inbox. Your community in the comments. Your live presence. Your product. Your events. Your customer experience. The way everything connects.

That’s where the value starts to move. Away from content in isolation, and toward brand ecosystems that feel coherent, specific and human at every touchpoint. Because if one piece of content can now be copied, remixed or generated endlessly, the thing that matters more is the world around it.

The moat is no longer “I can make content.” The moat is “I create a universe people want to be inside.”

That is the real shift. In an AI-heavy market, content itself gets cheaper. Credibility, cohesion and brand affinity get more expensive.

So the action here is not to compete on volume or efficiency, because AI will win that game. Compete on what cannot be commoditised. Build a voice people recognise immediately. Build experiences that feel connected wherever your audience meets you. Build community that wants you, not just content like yours. And if you’re a brand, creator or investor, stop evaluating value at the level of output alone. Content is one touchpoint. The stronger question is whether the rest of the brand holds up when people step closer.

That’s why I land on yes. AI does reduce the value of content overall. It just makes the total experience of a brand - and the trust embedded in it - far more important.

Where do you stand? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Leave a comment

Bottom line

Build an audience around something and you have proved it’s real. You’ve done the hard part. You’ve found the people who care.

Attention is the primary currency. Connection is the secondary currency.

If you can build both around an idea - even a small, niche idea - you have something with real value.

You can sell it. Extend it. Take it somewhere.

Community Service returns next Wednesday.

Yours truly,

Grace and Jordan

Hello friends, and welcome back to Community Service!

Quick reminder of what we’re doing here. Community Service exists to help you service your communities better. We pull apart the biggest stories and trends in media, creators and marketing so you can take those learnings and turn them into something useful for your business. Grace and I do the digging, you get the insight.

If someone in your world would benefit from reading this - please send it to them!

As always, our goal with today’s debrief is to keep you dangerously informed.

Whether you’re a creator, founder, brand builder or a marketing nerd like us, we’ve got you covered.

This week’s edition:

THE BIG STORY: Why Hannah Montana nostalgia landed so hard (it’s not just the show, it’s grief for shared culture)

THE BIG TREND: Experiential is having a moment (Secret Cinema flagship + Meta Labs on Fifth Avenue prove physical matters again)

THE BIG DEBATE: Can brands become creators? (Three points each, you decide who wins)

Ready?

THE BIG FEATURE

The World Turned Towards Nostalgia This Week (Hannah Montana Explains Why)

What happened: The Hannah Montana 20th anniversary special dropped this week and the response was overwhelming.

Jordan: The 20th anniversary special dropped this week and the response was overwhelming. Views, engagements, general cultural noise. It hit differently to what you’d expect from a TV show anniversary.

Hannah Montana ran from 2006 to 2011. I was bang in the target demographic. I remember coming home on a Friday evening, sitting down to watch Disney Channel, and knowing that every kid I knew was doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

That’s the bit that matters. Not just the show. The synchronicity.

We lived in a genuine monoculture. Disney put their content on the platform where everyone was spending their time - linear TV - and it was just watched by everybody. No algorithm. No niche. Just on, and everyone watched it.

That world is gone. We’ve moved from monoculture to microculture, from scarcity to abundance. And like any economy, when supply explodes, value per unit drops. There is more content than any human could ever consume - and yet culturally, it feels like there’s less to talk about.

That’s the real reason these nostalgia moments land so hard. It’s not just fondness for a TV show. It’s grief - mild, mostly unconscious - for a world where culture was genuinely shared. Reunions and anniversaries briefly restore it. For a moment, everyone’s looking at the same thing again.

For brands: if your audience is roughly 25 to 35, nostalgia isn’t just an emotional pull, it’s a genuine cultural window. It’s one of the few moments in modern media where you can reach people collectively rather than individually. That’s increasingly rare. Don’t waste it.

Grace: Me and my friends who are turning 30 this year literally arranged a viewing party to watch this last night.

I think nostalgia is one of the greatest elements to any campaign that most people sleep on. And if you’re a new brand who maybe doesn’t have history or legacy with a consumer yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t tap into motifs, symbols, culture, icons that generate the same feeling.

Think collaborations, licensing, or even bringing motifs through campaigns. Nostalgia has such a pull on consumers because it’s so deeply emotional. And if you can build that into your marketing and campaigns, you’ve immediately evoked a depth of emotion that is otherwise very hard to achieve.

As a side note, it makes me slightly sad to think that tweens don’t have this sort of TV today. They don’t have shows they’re growing up with - because TV doesn’t play the same role. Streaming has kind of removed that category of show.

I think about all of the teen magazines that we would buy every week and compare notes and quizzes and teen crushes. I think it opens a huge gap, creates loads of white space for something to replace that category that’s been lost.

Not necessarily a product, but a modern day coming-of-age series, targeted at the 10-16 age group.

What This Means for You

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