The media landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift. As public attention fragments and audiences retreat into private digital spaces, traditional TV promo playbooks are becoming obsolete. In this keynote, Sara Wilson unpacks why fandom is now essential to entertainment strategy and shows how to architect it into your shows, not just market it.

In 2020, Wilson predicted this evolution in Harvard Business Review, coining the term “digital campfires” to describe Gen Z’s move toward more intimate, often more participatory communities.

Today, that migration has triggered a deeper cultural shift: relevance is no longer about how many people you can reach, but how deeply you can cultivate active participation, drive conversation, and forge collective identity.

Fandom sits at the center of this behavioral shift - and because of that, it has become the ultimate engine of attention, loyalty, and growth in the post-social era.

In this talk, Wilson unpacks the dynamics of this new era. Traversing television, internet culture, and decentralized fan communities, she shares an actionable framework for transforming passive audiences into active co-creators - revealing why the future belongs to entertainment that audiences don’t just watch, but make part of who they are.