From audiences to tribes.

The report in 60 seconds

Paid still works. Creators still work. But the marginal next dollar buys less than it used to. The brands ahead of the curve are quietly adding the next layer alongside.

The shift: Audiences are what people say they are. Tribes are what they actually do. Community membership is the only non-declarative signal — repeated, costly, almost impossible to fake.

The map: Four behavioural archetypes — Sweat, Smart, Hospitality, Fandom — cover the rooms your customers already belong to. Most belong to several.

The opportunity: Community is reaching the moment every channel reaches when it goes from soft brand line to serious channel. The metrics are finally catching up.

Monday morning: Four moves — be a patron before you amplify; build owned, borrow earned, share with peers; layer community on top of what you already run; track the metrics that compound.

One number: 10,000+ communities in France, of a 29M+ global universe.

One question: Which tribes do your customers already belong to?

01 — The noisy channels got really good. And really crowded.

TikTok publishes 34 million videos a day. All that capability is running into the same wall: the channels did their job too well, and now everyone's there. 70% of Gen Z can't name a brand that feels relevant to them right now. 65% of marketers say their message can't cut through socials. It's not a creative problem. It's not a budget problem. The channels just got crowded.

The question isn't whether to add a new layer. It's where. The answer is the same one humans have always given when the noise gets loud: smaller rooms, fewer people, more trust. Tribes.

02 — Audiences are what people say they are. Tribes are what they actually do.

Almost everything we know about consumers is declarative. Surveys. Form fills. Interests they ticked on Meta in 2015 and never updated. Communities are the opposite. Nobody fakes showing up to a 7am run club for two years. Nobody pays for a ceramics studio they don't care about. Community membership is a behavioural signal, not a declared one. It's repeated, costly, and almost impossible to fabricate — which is what makes it valuable.

A tribe tells you, in one data point, what a hundred survey questions can't: what someone values enough to spend their time on, who they trust enough to spend it with, and what kind of brand they'd actually let into the room. Community is the only non-declarative proxy for who someone actually is.

03 — The new map of social

There are 29M+ communities worldwide, IRL and online. Ernest has mapped 10,000+ across France and counting. Four patterns keep showing up:

Sweat clubs: Run or cycling clubs, Hyrox crews, padel leagues, pilates studios. Built around loyalty — showing up at 7am on a Sunday. Best brand fit: performance, athleisure, nutrition, recovery, wellness tech, longevity.

Smart clubs: Book clubs, debate societies, writing nights, philosophy circles, business breakfasts. Quiet, dense, high-trust. Best brand fit: media, publishing, education, premium B2B, cultural and craft brands.

Hospitality clubs: Supper clubs, wine tastings, retreats, expat circles, neighbourhood coffee culture. Best brand fit: food, beverage, hospitality, travel, beauty, spirits, lifestyle.

Fandom clubs: Gaming nights, anime conventions, watch parties, listening sessions, esport meetups. Best brand fit: entertainment, gaming, tech, music.

04 — Brands aren't switching channels. They're adding a layer.

On builds a run club ecosystem online and off. Lululemon turned ambassador programs into a category that lives in studios, group chats, and feeds at once. Glossier grew through a private community of customers before it grew through ads. Duolingo's fandom does more for the brand on TikTok than any campaign brief ever asked for. They didn't drop paid social — they made room for something new alongside it.

The trade-off is concrete. A paid impression buys a half-second of distracted attention against a rising CPM. A run-club partnership buys ninety minutes of physical presence, conversation between members, two weeks of organic content, and a story.

"The community gap was the thing nobody had a name for. Brands knew how to do it once: sponsor the dinner, fund the league, but only when someone on the team had the contact. They couldn't turn it into a repeatable channel. That's why we are building ernest." — Marguerite Japy, Co-Founder & CEO

05 — A new channel needs a new performance language.

The reason community has stayed a soft brand line on the media plan isn't that nobody believed in it. It's that nobody had built the infrastructure to measure it properly. Community is reaching that moment now.

From reach to show-up: Impressions told you who scrolled past. Show-up tells you who engaged — a stronger predictor of what comes next.

From engagement to attachment: A like is a tap. Attachment is coming back, bringing a friend, repurchasing, recommending.

From visibility to brand story: Visibility is being seen. Brand story is being talked about by people who weren't paid to do it.

06 — Four things to do on Monday morning.

Be a patron, then amplify. Fund the dinner, sponsor the league, host the night — then turn on social, content, and paid. The physical presence is what makes the amplification credible. Skip the patronage and the rest reads as advertising.

Build your own. Borrow others. Team up with peers. Build owned communities, borrow earned reach through others, and partner with brands whose communities overlap with yours.

Use community as a precision layer. Demographic and behavioural data still work. Community adds what they couldn't reach: values, drivers, intentions, lifestyle. Not what someone is, but what they care about, who they trust, and what they do with their time.

Track the new proprietary metrics. Show-up beats impressions. Attachment beats engagement. Word-of-mouth beats click-through. The dashboard is different because the channel is different.

What happens next

The brands that win the next decade won't be the loudest. They'll be the ones who show up early, and generously — where their customers actually are. Ernest is building the most comprehensive map of communities in France: 10,000+ and growing, helping consumer brands activate them with intent.