I was doing my annual-Marie-Kondo-files-cleaning on my computer when I found an old but gold and VERY current paper from McKinsey called “The community flywheel”.
OMG! How I used this paper in my Influencer Marketing classes, to explain what influence is about to my consulting clients and even to creators launching their own products/brands and looking for a marketing strategy better than just investing tons of dollars in paid media. (Which for me, only works for Mark Zuckerberg right now! LOL)
Back in 2020, when the paper was released, “the big idea in marketing” was community: “reaching consumers in the communities they are a part of and helping them express community membership by participating in your brand”, as they summarized in the paper.
Sounds familiar? Yeah! Cut to 2026 and everyone is still trying to get it right.
From that paper, I really love this chart:
The paradigm shift from Mass Media to Community was never completed. And that is true for brands (too fond of vanity metrics) and creators (always searching for virality).
But this framework actually explains a lot about where the Creator Economy is going now…
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