What happened in this Culture story?

At Variety's Entertainment and Technology Summit, six top marketers from TikTok, Lionsgate, Pinterest, Spotify, AMC Global Media and Archrival agreed that the social media era rewards brands which hand creative power to fans rather than try to replicate fan expression in-house.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Dawn Yang**, TikTok's global head of entertainment, said users post more than 12 million TV and film clips a day on the platform, calling that "participatory culture of co-creation" the engine of engagement.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Brianna McElroy**, Lionsgate's global head of digital marketing for motion picture, said the studio actively hires fans to produce its TikTok "edits" content rather than mimic that fan-driven style internally, noting much of it comes from 15- to 18-year-olds.

Six Marketers: Fan-Made Content Beats Studio Replicas — SkimNews

By Variety · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-17

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Dawn Yang, TikTok's global head of entertainment, said users post more than 12 million TV and film clips a day on the platform, calling that "participatory culture of co-creation" the engine of engagement.
Brianna McElroy, Lionsgate's global head of digital marketing for motion picture, said the studio actively hires fans to produce its TikTok "edits" content rather than mimic that fan-driven style internally, noting much of it comes from 15- to 18-year-olds.
Sara Pollack, Pinterest's global head of consumer marketing, described a Warner Bros. partnership around "Practical Magic 2" that converted Gen Z searches for herbal apothecaries, crystal meanings and tarot readings into a real-world pop-up with tarot card readings and custom candle-making.
Jenny Haggard, Spotify's global head of thought leadership, challenged the six-second-ad orthodoxy by citing Spotify dashboard data showing roughly a third of older Gen Z users stream 100% of two-hour podcast episodes, concluding "Gen Z isn't allergic to long-form content; they're allergic to shitty content."
Ben Harms, chief growth officer at Archrival, argued brands that win over the next decade will build "ecosystems of experiences and human connection" rather than chase attention alone.
Kim Granito, CMO of AMC Global Media, said marketers must design "choose-your-own-adventure" paths for franchises like "The Walking Dead" because fans express the same passion in wildly different ways — from silent watchers to Comic Con cosplayers of Negan.
Haggard also pushed back on cohort shorthand, telling marketers that the 14-to-29 Gen Z range spans such different life stages that "life stage is a better predictor of behavior than birth year."

Why it matters: For entertainment marketers, the panel crystallized a tactical consensus: studios that outsource creative to fans (Lionsgate's hired TikTok editors) and platforms that translate fandoms into real-world activations (Pinterest's "Practical Magic 2" pop-up) are outpacing traditional campaign architectures. With TikTok logging 12 million user-generated TV/film posts per day and Spotify data upending the six-second-ad assumption, the playbook is shifting from broadcast control to participatory infrastructure — a change that puts pressure on every studio still gating its IP behind one-way marketing.