worklife youtube special
the strategist
The relationship economy How Jordan Schwarzenberger believes creators must rethink YouTube, audience building and authenticity in an era of endless content
ordan Schwarzenberger is one of the UK’s most influential voices in the creator economy. He’s CEO and co- founder of Arcade, the management and
are still important, but on their own they are no longer enough to maintain attention. “A lot of creators are still living in 2016 to 2020,” he says. “They might only be doing one video a month, maybe that’s all they can produce, but that’s not enough any more. That long video alone is never going to take up enough share. People will forget.” Instead, Schwarzenberger believes creators must think more broadly – about building an ecosystem around their videos. “How can you build a world around your content?” he asks. “Your distribution strategy has to be multi-format and multi-platform.” That means clips, shorts, TikToks, podcasts, live streams, community posts and social media touchpoints all working together to keep creators visible in an increasingly crowded digital landscape. The streamers dominating younger audiences already understand this. Some spend extraordinary amounts purely on distribution. “Some of them are spending $100,000 or $150,000 a month on clips,” he says. “Because they know the streams are only going to be watched by a fraction of the people who see them every week.” The rise of TikTok accelerated this shift dramatically. Schwarzenberger describes it as the moment culture moved from being curated to personalised. “You went from editorial platforms distributing content to individual pieces of content finding audiences,” he says. “The individual piece of content is now what reaches people.” For creators, that means every upload effectively starts from zero. Followers help, but they no longer guarantee reach. Instead, creators constantly battle for attention inside algorithmic feeds built entirely around audience interest.
ventures company behind Europe’s biggest YouTube group the Sidemen, who have well over 100 million subscribers between them. He was chief creative officer at popular culture thought-leader YMU at just 20 years old. He’s the host of creator economy show Think Like A Creator, a Forbes 30 Under 30 presenter and a member of 10 Downing Street’s SME Council. And he’s still only 29. Changing careers after working at Vice and Ladbible, he is now focused on everything from attention spans and algorithms to AI fatigue and the future of authenticity. And he says modern creators are no longer competing with other channels but with every piece of content on the internet. “There was a time when uploading one polished YouTube video every few weeks was enough. Build an audience, gather subscribers and wait for the algorithm to do the rest. That world is gone,” he says. “You’re now competing with people’s interests rather than the creators they follow.” Behind the curtain Schwarzenberger’s mission is to help creators understand the modern attention economy and why audience behaviour has fundamentally changed. “Ten years ago, we maybe watched 100 things a week,” he explains. “Now, it’s probably 1000 pieces of content a week, or things in culture that you’re engaging with.” That explosion in content consumption changes everything for creators. Long-form YouTube videos
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July/August 2026
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