WORLD BUILDING

Being a millennial means I've lived through the rise and every iteration of marketing and corporate catchphrases, all the way back to "synergy." Now that synergy has gone from cringe to straight-up forgotten, I've noticed the rise of a new contender for 2026: "World-Building."

I wish I knew who the cheeky little fellow was who first "came up" with this term, just so I could picture them with a self-satisfied grin on their face, waiting for a gold star sticker to be placed on their forehead.

The way this term gets tossed around is to describe creatives who are true storytellers, who can think beyond taglines and campaigns, and can think long-term about what the brand is, how and where it shows up, and why that matters to their audience over time.

This skillset might feel "unique" to traditional advertisers who've spent decades conditioned to think one ad, one platform at a time. But it's table stakes for every other creative who works in a 360 landscape and understands how modern communications actually function in 2026.

In fact, it's an existing thing that myself and other creatives have been talking about for a while. We just called it something different: Lifestyle Marketing. The "world" you're supposed to be building is the realized iconography of the lifestyle your audience is already living in. World-building is bringing a brand to life in a way that is actively, culturally relevant to their ideal target in real time, aspirationally. I've said it before: people today use brands as pieces of individual iconography to signal who they are and what they stand for. That's exactly why influencer marketing blew up when it did. Aspirationally, audiences saw themselves in the people they followed, through the world those people inhabit. To this day, becoming an influencer means creating a world where people can see themselves living. It's specific. It unfolds over time. It requires consistency. Showing up the same way, again and again, organically.

I'm glad marketers are finally emerging from the old-school bubble and joining the lifestyle world, and I'm genuinely hopeful it's not a trend. Earlier this year, GAP hired their first Chief Entertainment Officer, and many companies will follow. They called it entertainment. I called it Lifestyle Affinity. And this is created by leveraging entertainment, content, and licensing platforms across music, television, film, sports, gaming, consumer products, and cultural collaborations. The recipe for cultural relevance I've been trying to sell for years.

So as I welcome fellow marketers to this side of our practice, a few words of advice for navigating this brand new world well:

World-building done right is about your audience, not your brand. Show up in the right way, at the right time, in a way that's relevant to them. Full stop.

Entertainment is not engagement. The world doesn't need more branded, self-serving content. When developing a concept, ask yourself: How is this relevant to the life my target audience lives or wants to live? How are they going to engage with it actively, rather than just watch it passively?

Think about the north star you're building toward. Across mediums, platforms, and budgets. More importantly, across years.

Bonus points: How does the world you're building facilitate human connection? People will never forget a brand that helped them find belonging in a way they couldn't have found on their own. That's the real thing worth building.