I Miss Movies. That’s How I Know Awareness Has Changed.
A reflection on modern systems and what they’ve quietly changed about how things get noticed.
→ This is a story about what changed when discovery stopped being curated and started being automated.
TL;DR
Realizing how disconnected I am from the rhythm of movie releases sent me into reflection mode. The POV I landed on: In a world where discovery is increasingly automated, awareness isn’t created by being louder or more frequent — it’s created when something feels clear, relevant, and meant for the right people to notice.
I woke up the other day with a thought that surprised me: I miss movies.
Not in a nostalgic, everything-was-better-before Covid way — more like a quiet realization. I mean, I live in Los Angeles, and I spent a good chunk of my career working in entertainment, so, ipso facto, opening weekend used to play an outsized role in the rhythm of my life. But, like a lot of people, going to see the latest movie fell off my to-do list in 2020 and never really came back, and I was honestly pretty content to think those days were behind me.
But I recently decided to watch Tron: Ares on a whim and realized it was exactly the kind of film I would’ve liked to see in a theater. Big screen. Loud sound. A shared experience. And, I started to wonder why I didn’t go see it.
The answer: I barely knew it existed, but, and also, maybe a little because the last Tron bored me enough that I hadn’t been looking for a sequel.
What really hit home for me as I got all deep about it is that I didn’t know anything about the movie. I hadn’t seen a trailer. I hadn’t clocked a release date. I didn’t have a sense of what kind of experience it was meant to be. I do remember a viral clip that crossed my social media feed more than a few times. It made me smile, but it didn’t make me search out the film. And that feels meaningfully different from how movies used to enter our lives.
Do you remember this clip? Did it make you want to go see Tron: Ares?
Which brings me to my usual topic of marketing. I see this as a classic discovery (aka awareness) problem.
Here is my chain of thought:
Web 2.0 changed the way we receive news and information. People used to hear about things in environments designed for exploration — flipping channels, browsing a magazine rack, listening to the radio. This is a very lean-back model where information is pushed out to people.
Today, discovery is mostly lean-forward. This puts the onus on people to actively engage in pursuing information. Put another way, we have to know what we are looking for or go out searching for a needle in a haystack.
In that shift, something else happened quietly: computers replaced curators. Platforms became the primary way content reaches us, and algorithms took over the job of deciding what we might like next. Their goal isn’t to help us discover something new in a meaningful way — it’s to keep us engaged.
What surfaces, aka registers in our brains, are optimized moments, familiar patterns, and things adjacent to what we’ve already shown interest in. Over time, that makes discovery narrower, not broader.
Web 2.0 (noun): websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices). (Wikipedia)
The term represents the shift from static, publisher-driven media to interactive, user-generated, platform-based systems where content is discovered, shared, and ranked through user behavior and algorithms.
Bottom line: brand awareness is much more complicated today than it was even 5 years ago.
In a system optimized for engagement, the challenge becomes: how do you ensure the people you actually want to reach receive your message? Or, in my case, how does someone like me — who genuinely would have enjoyed seeing Tron: Ares in a theater — ensure that I know about it?
Historically, marketers assumed repetition would do the work and adopted the Rule of 7. This logic, however, while still being applied to basic marketing models today, starts to break down in an environment where people can skip, or, gasp, block ads and scroll past thousands of messages a day without really seeing any of them. In that context, showing up seven times doesn’t guarantee awareness — it often just blends into the noise.
Rule of 7 (noun): a marketing principle that suggests a potential customer needs to encounter a brand’s message at least seven times before they take action and make a purchase (Growth Media).
This is why I keep coming back to an idea that media strategist Even Shapiro describes as the affinity economy (ESHAP, Media War & Peace).
His position is that people are shifting away from scale-for-scale’s-sake in a move toward finding more connection, relevance, and belonging. Awareness isn’t being created by volume here — it’s being created by fit. Out in the real world, I’m seeing this trend come to life in social communities curated around values and behaviors vs roles. For example, I’m going on a LA Tech Walk to meet other people interested in AI that live in my neighborhood and am thinking about joining Dog PPL – a hybrid park, café, bar, and lounge for people who want to hang out with their canines. (I’m even willing to drive to a different part of LA to check it out. IYKYK.) This highlights a broader cultural signal: in an environment this crowded, awareness is no longer being created by being louder or more frequent — it’s created when something feels like it is for you. Put another way, when something aligns with your interests, your identity, or the way you see the world, it cuts through in a way repetition alone never will.
For brands, this changes the work. If awareness is earned through affinity, then clarity and relevance matters more than coverage. People don’t connect with everything — they connect with people, places, and things that reflect something they already care about. That means ‘brand marketing’ can’t be an afterthought layered on top of distribution. It has to do the orienting work up front: what something is, who it’s for, and why it exists. Technology can amplify that signal — or flatten it entirely — depending on whether it’s used to express a point of view or simply to scale output, and purpose now matters in a very practical way. It means more than a price, slogan, or positioning exercise.
In an affinity-driven system, purpose becomes the defining factor that makes brand recognition possible.
When a brand knows how it wants to show up and can do so consistently, its signal gets easier to read. Decisions get simpler. Messages cohere. And the right people connect with it.
Purpose Play
For those who are new here, a Purpose Play is my way of helping you connect what I’m writing about to your own business. It’s a moment to step back from the ideas, check for alignment, and consider whether—and how—something applies to what you’re actually building.
Take a moment to think about the brand you’re building—or rebuilding.
Not the logo. Not the content calendar. The idea of it.
Ask yourself:
What do I want this brand to be known for?
If someone only encountered it in fragments—a headline, a post, an ad—what would they understand about what it stands for?
Would that signal be clear enough to create recognition?
I don’t miss movies because I want to go backward. I miss what they represented: shared context, anticipation, a sense that something was worth showing up for.
That’s harder to create now — not just for studios, but for any brand trying to be noticed in a crowded, fragmented system. Building awareness just asks for a different kind of work. Less volume. More intention. Less chasing attention, more earning recognition.
And I think that matters.
About the Work
I’m Amy Zwagerman—brand strategist, fractional CMO, and founder of The Launch Box. I work with founders and marketing leaders to translate durable marketing principles into strategies and systems that fit their specific context, stage, and goals.
Marketing Jam sits alongside my client work as a place to explore ideas more openly. If the thinking here resonates and you’re curious about working together, you can learn more about my services or get in touch here.
AI-supported, human-led. All ideas and insights are my own. Curious how I use AI and where I draw the line? See my AI Disclosure Policy →
Integrity Pledge 🙋🏻♀️: The books, newsletters, shows, podcasts, and client work shared here are 100% reflective of my world. I will always disclose if and when I have a relationship with a brand I mention in a post or am sharing an affiliate link.