11.12.25
News
Key takeaways at a glance
- Creator-led communities now shape mainstream cultural outcomes
- Digital-first audiences mobilise faster and convert at greater scale than traditional fanbases
- The creator-to-mainstream pipeline has become a standard route to visibility
- Trust and participation now outperform reach and production value
- Broadcast success increasingly depends on creator-led distribution
- Brands that win next will be built with communities, not just marketed to them
At the weekend, content creator and social media star Ginge won the iconic finale of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here. On the surface, it was a feel-good TV moment that capped off weeks of primetime entertainment. But beneath that headline sits something far more significant: a cultural shift in how mainstream visibility is built, and who now has the power to shape it.
Ginge didn’t enter the jungle with the usual media infrastructure behind him. No long-standing TV career, no tabloid narrative carrying him into the show, no years of public positioning deciding how audiences should perceive him. Instead, he arrived with something far stronger: a deeply loyal, highly engaged online community built through consistency, access and trust. That audience followed him into the mainstream, mobilised behind him, and ultimately delivered the result.
On the surface it was entertainment. Underneath, it was proof that digital-first audiences now shape mainstream outcomes.
From online following to cultural authority
For a long time, creators sat alongside celebrity rather than within it. Commercially valuable, culturally active, but still positioned as secondary to traditional broadcast fame. That distinction is now increasingly difficult to sustain.
Creators aren’t circling mainstream culture anymore, they’re actively driving it.
Ginge’s journey is not a one-off. It reflects a wider shift already playing out across media. In the US, Alix Earle’s appearance on Dancing With The Stars attracted a younger demographic back to the format and delivered measurable ratings impact. In the UK, figures like GK Barry have moved from TikTok and podcasting into primetime TV and panel shows with ease, bringing their audiences with them.
The movement between platforms now runs in every direction. Mainstream exposure no longer validates creators. Creators increasingly validate mainstream platforms.
As Mischa, Managing Director at SUMMER., explains:
“Creators now arrive with their audience already built and behaviour already shaped. Platforms don’t just get talent, they inherit community momentum.”
Why community now decides outcomes
Ginge’s win wasn’t driven by airtime alone. It was delivered through sustained participation: voting, sharing, rallying and collective action from his audience. That’s influence with practical consequence. Influence that converts. Influence that moves at speed.
What this moment makes clear is that public recognition now grows from credibility rather than infrastructure. Trust sits at the centre of modern fame, built slowly through access, consistency and shared identity. Visibility on its own no longer carries the same power. Belief does.
What this shift means for brands in 2026
The old model placed television at the top of the influence hierarchy, with social media acting as support. That structure no longer reflects how attention is built or where commercial impact now comes from.
Across campaigns, launches and partnerships, the same patterns are now showing up again and again:
- Social-first talent drives broadcast outcomes
- Community participation shapes cultural relevance
- Low-friction authenticity consistently outperforms high-gloss production
- Trust converts more reliably than reach
- For marketers, moments like Ginge’s win function as early signals of where strategy needs to move next.
Mischa adds:
“We’ve entered a participation economy. The strongest campaigns are built with audiences, not broadcast at them. Community energy is now a commercial lever, not a soft metric.”
Five strategic shifts brands need to make next
- Community matters more than scale
The most commercially powerful creators aren’t always the biggest. What matters is how mobilised their audience is and how willing that audience is to act.
- Platform fluidity must be built in from the start
Creators now operate across social, audio, IRL and broadcast without breaking momentum. Campaigns must be built for movement, not locked to a single channel.
- Realness outperforms polish
Audiences gravitate towards familiarity, humour, access and imperfection. Over-produced narratives struggle to keep pace with the way culture actually travels.
- Broadcast performs best when creators lead the charge
TV still delivers scale, but creators increasingly determine who shows up, when they tune in and how long they stay engaged.
- Participation multiplies performance
Audiences want to shape outcomes, not just watch them unfold. Voting, co-creation, drops, access and shared rituals all turn passive viewers into active contributors.
If you want to understand the future of celebrity: watch the creator economy. Celebrity today gathers where attention, access and trust intersect, and those forces now concentrate online first before spilling into every other part of culture.
Creators like Ginge don’t borrow relevance from mainstream platforms anymore. They carry it in with them. And that dynamic is only accelerating.
For brands, the implication is clear. The next era of influence won’t be built around who is most famous. It will be shaped by who is most trusted, most followed, and most capable of mobilising real community energy.
Working with creators to build real commercial impact? SUMMER. helps brands identify, activate and scale community-driven talent that actually moves audiences. If your 2026 strategy needs to work harder than awareness alone, now is the time to talk: hello@thisissummer.co
