How Knowing Your Community Unlocks Growth

In a world that is fast moving, fragmented and constantly shifting, most conversations in this industry circle back to the same problem: growth has gotten harder. The instinct in those conditions is usually to push harder against the same dial. More reach, more channels, more optimisation, more spend across more touchpoints. 

However, a recent conversation with the CEO and Founder of SheerLuxe and the Managing Director of 4Studio, alongside some of the recent findings from this year’s Belonging in Britain research make a compelling commercial case for a different approach: that a deeperunderstanding of your communities unlocks growth. 

Georgie Coleridge Cole Founded SheerLuxe as a directory and mailer in 2007. Nineteen years later, they email 800,000 subscribers a day at a 60% open rate and have just sold to Future for £40 million.  

Alex Morris is the MD of 4Studio, Channel 4’s social-first division, for a broadcaster that has been a cultural institution for the best part of half a century. Two very different businesses, built in very different ways, but when we sat down with them at our Golf and Spa 2026 event to talk about community and growth, they both held the same principle: you cannot shortcut real closeness to an audience. 

At the same time, our recent Belonging in Britain research – exploring how modern British audiences are finding connection, identity and community across culture, interests and everyday life – revealed for the second year running just how this power looks in action. 96% of people in communities trust the opinion and advice of others in their group and 86% of people have taken some form of action as a result of their community. A high number which has only grown year on year. 

Those brands that are speaking to people through the lens of identity, passions and community, rather than simply the demographic bracket they fall into, are earning a different kind of attention, resonance and ultimately growth. 

After nearly two decades of staying close, consistent and authentically connecting to a specific audience, Georgie’s take was simple “You can’t cheat it. We’re in an era now that is about depth as opposed to scale. And it has to be real and that takes time.” SheerLuxe’snumbers are the result of twenty years monitoring every comment and engagement, daily, across every platform, to build a close and loyal community that is rare and incredibly influential. It is not a strategy to be revisited once a quarter. 

Alex articulated the same idea from inside a much larger organisation. At 4Studio, Channel 4 has built genre-specific communities for their editorial verticals, each with its own voice and its own audience. But the underlying principle is the same: knowing exactly who you are talking to and showing up consistently in a way that an audience can recognise as you. “We have a voice that needs to be slightly distinctive from others in the space.” Channel 4’s Trump-takeover stunt last year, when its entire social estate spent twenty-four hours behaving as Donald Trump, worked because everyone knew Channel 4 could do that, and in comparison, a brand like the BBC could not”. Brands that hold a deep relationship with their community can afford to be distinctive in ways that brands without it cannot. That distinctiveness is what their growth runs on. 

I am very aware that ‘Community’ is an industry hot topic now. And looking at the results from our research and coupling it with the success stories of SheerLuxe and 4Studio, there is no doubt there’s huge opportunity here for those willing to do it properly and authentically. 

As Georgie put it: “Knowing your community is about lots of things. Authenticity is a massively overused word, but it’s about starting small, being authentic, building trust, building loyalty, and being really close to it. For us, that means having a team that reflects our community, that lives it and embodies it. It’s only that way, I think, that you get your brand right, you get your content right, because you’re living and breathing it. It’s about constant feedback loops.” 

Part of being authentic is having a voice. To provide value to communities, you need to provide a point of view and have a voice that both stands out and remains consistently ‘you’.  

Alex explained, “A big focus is what this brand’s point of view is. What’s its DNA? What are its guidelines? None of the social or digital best practices achieve anything without that razor-sharp focus on your point of view, your story, and knowing who you’re talking to – and in what tone and style. I think that is the most important thing to get right.” 

Both Georgie and Alex held the same opinion: without a firm brand position, none of the rest holds together. Georgie’s test for SheerLuxeis whether, with all the branding stripped away, you would still know it was them. For 4Studio, Alex said, “We don’t want to alienate people, yet we do have a position.” 

What was also interesting was how both speakers translate a fixed brand identity into different expressions across channels.  

Alex explained his approach as “We have a kind of genre-led distribution network where we build communities that coalesce around shows or content or types of content that they love. For example, we have a docs genre, and even within that, we’ve gone more granular with adventure and with crime. So, people can really unite around the stuff that they absolutely love. We’ve also done that with food, for example. We’ve launched a food brand purely in social called 4Served, that’s designed to build a community that we didn’t have necessarily, but we had a great cultural heritage in food, and we’ve always used loads of food talent.” 

Our Belonging in Britain research at MG confirmed how important this is from the audience side too. This year’s study revealed an exciting new insight; 81% of people feel a sense of community through at least one media channel. And 74% said at least one channel contributes to their identity. So, people are heading to their media platforms as though they are different communities and recognising them as indicators of their personalities – something Georgie and Alex consider with their strategies. 

Georgie described SheerLuxe’s approach simply: educate on-site, inspire on Instagram, and entertain on TikTok. The brand remains consistent, but the expression adapts to the platform and where the people are.  

Both Georgie and Alex work with more insight than any publisher a generation ago would have thought possible. You might think two people working at the sharp end of social and digital would be led by numbers, and they are. But they were both very clear about the vital role of human judgement. 

Georgie called it “”Leading with precision, with the lights on, and you absolutely need that. But you also need the qual side and need the gut instinct.” SheerLuxe grew because she and her team created content they actually wanted to read. They are committed to value and put themselves in the shoes of their audience and keep creating what they would want to see. The instinct came first, the data validatedand accelerated it. “It’s really the alchemy of those things working together. You can get a bit addicted to the data, but the art piece is super important.” 

Alex said much the same, “We have to really blend that art and science constantly. And we have data and insights teams, but we also have creative teams. And as a leader in that kind of sphere, it’s about really bringing those elements together.” 

If you take the time to build a community and earn their trust, you also earn some leeway when it comes to trialling new things. People are more likely to give you a chance because you’ve built that foundation. And that pays dividends when you try something brave.  

In Alex’s words: “Sometimes you know you have to lead people towards newness. It doesn’t always land perfectly first time, and you have to give it time.” 

The trust you build is not just a measure of brand health. It is what gives you the latitude to innovate, and to bring your audience somewhere new without losing them. 

The commercial case for brands to build communities is clear. It’s driven growth for Georgie and Alex, and Belonging in Britain has revealed just how important it is to consumers, driving perceptions and behaviour. 

In a nation-wide survey of over 2,000 UK adults, that’s a huge signal of opportunity for brands.  

The thing we kept coming back to is depth and proximity. Proximity to your community, to culture, to what people need next. It’s what Georgie has built over nineteen years and what Channel 4 has tended for nearly fifty. It is what the audience itself, in our research, is telling us they want to find. And it is, I suspect, where the question of growth will increasingly land for most brands over the next decade, by one route or another. 

When you look across the wider industry, so much is still framed around how to reach more people more efficiently. Perhaps a more valuable question is: “How can we become worth being found?” That is slower, harder work – and it rarely fits neatly into a campaign timeline. 

To explore the key insights from 2026’s Belonging in Britain, and be the first to receive the full report, click here.