'Brandom' – the quiet/loud revolution

By Rob Doherty 11-11-2025

The founder of consultancy firm Relevant Content explains how the time has come for traditional media players to partner with young content creators, ahead of a panel session on the subject at Manchester Animation Festival this week.

“We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to create! We wanna be free to create our content without being hassled by the Man. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Those slightly amended words feel oddly relevant again – but this time it’s not on the sticky dancefloors of our formative years, it’s in the virtual worlds of Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, TikTok and YouTube. A new generation of creators isn’t just playing games –it’s building them, quietly reshaping cultures and designing digital universes where creativity is the only currency that matters, and fandom is the main driver of success.

Now imagine a world where those, usually fleeting, successes and that unfettered imagination and rampant fandom are combined with brand-led industry experience and… BOOM!… ‘Brandom!’

While the media industry has been rather inelegantly exiting one era and stumbling towards another, something wonderful has been happening in the background. A wave of young creators is quietly doing its thing and redefining what kids and youth entertainment looks like.

Now with over 150 million daily active users (up 70% year-on-year – thanks Stephen Dypiangco) and more than three million active creators on Roblox alone, these creators are everywhere, most likely in their bedrooms. And they’re ready to make a noise.

They are not just participating in culture – they are culture. And they know their audience better than anyone, because they are their audience.

They vibe on the same frequency, trade the same memes and chill in the same online realms. Yes, that was my attempt to be down with Gen Z.

YouTube and TikTok are their training grounds, but Roblox and other social gaming platforms are their canvases. Most importantly, they aren’t burdened with the barriers of a bygone era, such as creative process, endless notes, fickle markets, shareholders, executive notes, executive lay-offs, new executive notes, gatekeepers, test audiences, or even copyright laws at times, it seems.

If you’ve worked in media long enough, you might remember why you started – to create, to experiment, to connect, to have fun. Somewhere along the line, the meetings, mergers and margins took over, but working with these new creators offers us a chance to rediscover that spark and, if we’re brave enough to join them, we might just rediscover something wonderful: the joy of making things simply because we can. To collaborate. To play again. To be free.

This unconstrained freedom is both thrilling and terrifying. On one hand, it allows unprecedented innovation. On the other, it often lacks the long-term thinking that transforms a viral hit into a sustainable brand. For every breakout success like Adopt Me! or Brookhaven, there are thousands of promising ideas that vanish into the algorithmic ether.

But this is exactly where opportunity lies. Traditional media folks – those who understand narrative structure, IP development and cross-platform strategy – can collaborate with these young visionaries to help them build worlds with staying power. The key is not to control them, but to partner with them.

With the global social gaming market expected to hit US$125bn by 2027 and with more than half of Gen Z identifying as content creators, there has never been a more exciting time for an industry trying to rediscover the magic and leap into a new era.

So, let’s get loaded, make a noise, and leap into a new era, the era of ‘brandom!’