I feel weirdly optimistic about next year. Even though the world is a big bad mess, I’m hopeful that in 2024 many of the structures of our industry will fall, for the good of our work. There’s been a positive shift towards making great brand-led work again, but if agencies are to help brands find new customers I think there’s some new thinking that’s needed. Get it right and we can work quicker, offer more value and be more impactful in a world where subcultures reign supreme.

Because with all the financial pressures on consumers, it won’t be enough to focus on loyalty next year. Whether a brand’s core customer base is getting older, churning or struggling with their bills, there’s a need to look beyond the safety of your first-hand data and insight. That could mean finding new audiences here in the UK or overseas. Either way, in 2024 that’s a huge challenge. Because the mainstream looks dead.

For good and bad, big legacy content powerhouses took huge hits this year, even the digital ones. From Netflix’s sputtering growth to lay-offs at Spotify, the companies that have built models based on top-down content production are struggling. But creators, and the platforms that distribute their content, are relentlessly booming. It’s not new, but there’s a great article by Ted Goia on just this and the rise of alternative platforms vs the legacy mainstream.

The micro is eating the macro. That’s a reality that makes me fearful of an election year in both the UK and US, but that can’t be ignored by brands or agencies. The fragmentation of audience attention into niche communities looks set to stay. As soon as we look at a screen we’re in a world of microculture.

So how do you adapt? At Weirdo, we’ve been building something we call The Index. Designed to help us understand the niche, but to also identify what connects people beyond subcultures. Essentially, a way for an agency to orientate itself to the underground, not the mainstream.

Three years ago we started talking to communities that were birthed in lockdown - niche collectives that were booming online and offline. It was a movement that conveniently aligned with our industry’s shift away from blunt demographics and we kept building this database of connections as more and more popped up.

We’ve spent a big chunk of 2023 adding individual cultural experts to this network, representing different subcultures around the world. It means we have ways to reach people outside of the industry really quickly, all over the world - whether that’s young football fans in the French suburbs for DAZN, female writers from Germany for Bumble, or trans+ athletes for Nike. And in all these cases we don't just understand what our collaborators care about, but also how they think about their identity too. Because at its simplest a subculture is the overlapping space between an interest area and a shared expression of identity or set of values.

The Index has been helping our clients access new perspectives and understand the audiences they don't always speak to. Because these are the people they need to connect with if they are to find growth.

Only we made a big mistake.

In 2023 we thought we needed to make a big holistic resource. In reality, what’s working best is helping our partners create their own bespoke networks. So now that’s our plan for 2024. To help the brands we work with look at their core audiences and ask, who else could we be speaking to? Then based on that answer, we plan to assemble the right connections to smart individuals, interesting communities and creative collections so that we can embed the audience in our creative processes.

What does that look like? It means cultural relevance at scale via trusted creatives and production talent. It means we can ensure we develop campaigns that resonate authentically with new audiences. It manages and reduces the risk of showing up in the wrong way with people who don’t know your brand. It means casting talent with relevant lived experience so that representation isn’t tokenistic, and doing the same behind the camera too. It means working from London but launching work across the world. It means expanding opportunities to new creative voices. And ultimately, it means working quickly and efficiently, at scale.

I hope that in 2024 we can help a few brave brands build an Index that gives them a creative edge. In the process the goal is to refine how we operate as an agency too: without a fixed shape or size, both big and small, both underground and mainstream.