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 found its way back. I was honestly pretty content to think those days were behind me.
But I recently decided to watch Tron: Ares on one of my TV apps 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. Which made me wonder: why didn’t I go see it?
The answer: I barely knew Tron: Ares existed, but, and also, maybe a little because the last Tron bored me enough that I hadn’t been looking for another sequel.
What hit home as I went all deep about my movie going behavior is that I really didn’t know anything about the film before last week. 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 actress Greta Lee crossing my social media feed more than a few times, but the clip, while delightfully entertaining, didn’t get me to 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 out and see Tron: Ares?
Which brings me to the 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 the public.
Today, discovery is mostly lean-forward. This means the onus is on the public to search out and pull information out of the systems we have access to. A person needs to know what they want to watch, read, or listen to or they will find themselves looking 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 — a person who genuinely would have enjoyed seeing Tron: Ares in a theater — ensure that I find out 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 just adds to 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 the noise in a way repetition alone never will.
One additional note: On a societal level, there’s another dynamic at play: age. Discovery systems are no longer operating against a single, shared audience. Increasingly, they’re supporting two distinct audiences, often split along generational lines, with different habits, platform preferences, and expectations (Evan Shapiro also covers this shift here). That split adds another layer of complexity to building awareness — but it’s a deeper conversation for another day.
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 feeling is 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.
Great piece, Amy. Your point about the 'onus' of discovery shifting to the consumer is spot on. It explains why even massive sequels like Tron can fly under the radar if they're relying on old-school repetition. I really appreciated the reminder that in the 'affinity economy,' being clear about who you're for is more effective than just trying to be loud. The 'Purpose Play' section is a great gut-check for anyone building a brand right now.