Insights, playbooks and field notes from inside the world of community marketing and brand activations for next-gen brands.

The state of community-led brand building in 2026: data, playbooks and benchmarks from the brands and crews redefining marketing.

No rate card, no invoice you can copy. Here is what a community marketing budget is actually made of, what drives each number, and the five costs that never make the first draft.

Paid social doesn't just cost more each year, it makes every brand look the same. Here's why saturation is a differentiation problem, not just an efficiency one, and a practical playbook for reallocating budget toward community marketing.
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Budgets keep climbing while trust keeps falling. Here's why community marketing has become the influencer marketing alternative brands reach for, and how to start.

Physical venues don't gather their crowds by accident. For brands, choosing where to host an event is no longer just aesthetics or logistics: it's a chance to access a community.

Paid discovery keeps shrinking while word-of-mouth keeps climbing. Here's what the latest consumer research says about where French brands are actually being found.

A new Brand Innovators report shows how AB InBev, Lay's, The Home Depot, and IKEA are all betting on fan communities for this World Cup.

Reach is broken, trust lives in small rooms. How consumer brands are rebuilding growth around the communities their customers already belong to.

Run clubs, supper clubs, padel leagues, book circles. A field guide to the new social fabric and the crews shaping consumer culture.

Paid media is broken. Here's why the brands winning the next decade are investing in real-world communities, and how to measure it.

A practical framework for matching brand values to community DNA, and avoiding the trap of vanity reach.

Reach is a vanity metric. Here's the framework we use at ernest to prove community ROI to your CFO.