Communities in a Fragmented Media Landscape

Over the past ten years, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that agencies can be part of IT consultancies. Still harder to get used to is the notion of agencies as part of media companies. That agencies receive commissions from media houses has a long tradition. But media companies running agencies themselves—that’s new. Ultimately, it’s always about extending the value chain.
We Are Era, based in Berlin, belongs to the RTL Group and thus to Bertelsmann. Today, with 240 people across eight locations—including Amsterdam, Milan, Paris, and Stockholm—the agency operates in several fields that naturally emerge from the context of a media group: talent management, video production and distribution, and advertising. The talents are primarily influencers and creators in need of professional representation and marketing. Video is the classic core business of a TV group: television, YouTube, social media. And advertising is the counterpart to distribution.

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What’s new is bringing all of this together under one roof. Tobias Schiwek, CEO of We Are Era, sees it as a model with real potential to set a precedent. I spoke with him in episode #102. From his perspective, the market is ripe for consolidation, given the necessary investments in data analytics and service excellence in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. The integrated approach also fits neatly into Bertelsmann’s logic as a media company built on synergies and extended value chains.
At the start of that chain are influencers and creators. They occupy countless thematic niches and bring their reach with them to the table. This is where talent management comes in. We Are Era doesn’t limit itself to digital creators but increasingly represents personalities from sports, broadcasting, music, and other fields. These individuals don’t necessarily need massive reach, but they do need a strong alignment with the value systems of different target groups.

Communities only form around shared values—and in today’s digitally fragmented attention economy, that process is far more granular. Zeitgeist and pop culture have been democratized, since every individual now influences them through attention and interaction. Talent management identifies the right channels, formats, brands, or campaigns based on value alignment. The work is data-driven, but it also relies heavily on personal relationships.
The matchmaking has to be spot-on, because only then do the KPIs add up for the brand. Reach only matters if the audience is the right one. And for the talent, it mustn’t look like a sellout. Credibility in all directions is essential. As an agency operating on both sides of the market, We Are Era has a double interest in getting that fit exactly right.
Between talent, broadcasters, and brands lies another major field: media production. Here, the focus is on creating intellectual property—whether video, music, or books. Within the Bertelsmann group, the entire ecosystem is already in place, which means shorter paths. Yet We Are Era doesn’t confine itself to group boundaries, in either production or distribution. For example, they market Spiegel’s YouTube channel—the most-watched YouTube presence of any media brand in Germany. In sports, they work with the Dutch national football team, whose main sponsor is ING Bank—for whom they also run a successful football channel.

This has little to do with traditional talent management and everything to do with understanding communities—knowing what holds them together and how to translate values into stories. In this environment, brands need a clear stance and a strong sense of which values they represent. Done right, that’s not particularly brave—it’s more like an insurance policy. A loyal community is a moat for a brand.
The competitive field is shifting from products to values, communities, and narratives. A direct competitor can’t easily claim the same narrative, but brands from other sectors often can. That creates a new competitive landscape. It also drives the need to quickly establish a presence on new platforms like TikTok. Because once a narrative is firmly established through interaction with a community, it becomes difficult for a second brand to claim it. “People believe people, not brands,” says Tobias.

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We Are Era is the result of a series of mergers. It began with Divimove, founded in 2012 as a multi-channel network (MCN). MCNs focused on video production, monetization, digital rights management, and audience development. After RTL Group fully acquired Divimove and the founders departed, the digital studio UFA X was added. Also part of RTL’s production and marketing portfolio, UFA X specialized in short-form content, but occasionally produced for the big screen as well.
In 2019 came United Screens, a Scandinavian MCN that RTL had acquired the year before. In early 2020, Divimove took over Tube One Networks, an agency specializing in social media and influencer marketing that previously belonged to the Ströer Group. UFA X also included MESH Collective, an agency focused on social change. MESH remained as the only active brand after the entire group rebranded as We Are Era in 2021.

This rebrand was preceded by an extensive process of self-discovery, with goals directed both inward and outward. It wasn’t just about finding a new name, but also about defining their position in the market—and clarifying how they work with each other and with partners: processes, value systems, vision, mission. One of the early guiding concepts was resilience in the face of ever-accelerating change, a challenge that affects We Are Era’s business in particular. Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic became the first real litmus test.

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What emerged from this process as a kind of social glue was a shared commitment to excellence. This united even divergent areas—such as MESH Collective, which works with NGOs and social change—with far more commercial activities. To structure responsibility, they introduced the RASCI model, which defines the roles and levels of involvement in projects and business processes.
In the end, they realized it all comes down to a genuine sense of belonging. When that’s in place, people step in to support one another and trust in their shared commitment to excellence. That sense of belonging also links directly to how We Are Era views fragmented media usage and communities. Their internal self-understanding and external perspective are part of the same loop.
It’s less about sociodemographics than psychographics: motivators, psychological effects, value systems, attitudes. Platforms may change—from horizontal video to vertical video, with new aesthetics each time—but what remains constant are people. People are people. The question isn’t how the platform is programmed, but how the human is programmed.