In 2020, young entrepreneur Jasmine Douglas started Babes on Waves, a digital networking space for women of colour navigating the creative industries during lockdown. But as restrictions were lifted, the power of IRL connection came into sharp focus. It was through real-life moments — partnering with Size? on an International Women’s Day event, hosting a flower arranging workshop with Beats to support domestic violence charity Sistah Space — that the community deepened. In 2024, she launched social wellness club Busy Babes, a new arm to her business that organises wellness meetups “for busy babes”, including international retreats and sauna and ice bath socials.
Douglas is part of a growing market. From run clubs and reading groups to sober socials and ceramics collectives, micro-communities are increasingly gathering offline, transforming shared interests into shared experiences for consumers. With them, a different kind of cultural capital is taking hold, which is not focused on traditional influencers and social reach. And brands want in.
Why the shift?
Rather than defaulting to traditional third spaces like cafés, gyms or bars, Gen Z and millennial consumers are gravitating towards more curated forms of gathering since the pandemic. “We started to see signals that something deeper was happening. Young people began to find new ways to re-explore in-person connection,” says Andrew Roth, founder of Gen Z research firm DCDX, which works with Spotify, TikTok and L’Oréal. “People were seeking out spaces they hadn’t previously thought of for community and belonging.”
Like Babes on Waves, many digital subcultures that formed during the pandemic — such as crochet communities on TikTok, independent film circles, or wellness-focused Discord servers — began migrating into physical settings. “This was a fundamental shift in how people were behaving, and that’s what we wanted to tap into,” says Roth.
Recognising this shift to IRL, in May, DCDX launched Offline, a new agency designed to connect brands with IRL micro-communities. In its first few months, Offline has onboarded over 1,500 community hosts from across the US, from yoga teachers to art night founders to underground supper club facilitators, matching them with brands like Hinge, Crocs and fragrance label Le Monde Gourmand.
And there’s still further growth potential. Origin, a US-based financial management app, has observed a trend in younger users spending more on hobbies and personal development in the last year. “While the amount that people spend on monthly hobbies and personal development varies, it’s clear that it’s increasingly becoming a priority. This trend reflects a growing willingness to invest in new skills that may support future growth, particularly if it could become an extra source of income during uncertain times,” says the app’s head of planning, Tyler Horn. Origin conducted a series of in-person interviews and online polling of 52 Americans aged between 18 and 44 in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco in June. Of those surveyed, 92 per cent said they spent money on hobbies in the last month, while 37.5 per cent spend $250 or more monthly on hobbies or personal development, from aerial arts to salsa.
“We hear a lot about the loneliness epidemic, but what that really means is people are craving experiences and memories with others, as well as a deeper sense of connection to themselves. That’s why we’re seeing hosts and community builders step into the spotlight,” Douglas says. Since her early events with Size? and Beats, she has partnered with brands such as Apple, Nike and Asos across a series of community events, ranging from post-work recovery meetups to wild swimming.
Some brands are already harnessing small communities to build meaningful connections with consumers by forging their own community partnerships. Performance brands like On and Hoka have seen strong returns by embedding themselves within grassroots run clubs where their running shoes gain traction through real-world credibility. Similarly, when Manchester-based label Represent launched its performance line, 247, it bypassed traditional sportswear playbooks in favour of niche fitness communities like CrossFit, ultramarathons and the Hyrox circuit. It is now the brand’s fastest-growing division, driven by its deep integration into its target consumers’ aspirational spaces. Meanwhile, Miu Miu has tapped into slower forms of engagement with its IRL book clubs and London-based designer Feben collaborated with Puma and Sistah Space earlier this year to host a life drawing class for her community.
Now Offline’s long-term vision is to help more brands move into micro-communities, while assisting hosts to monetise what they’ve built. “Some of the run clubs we’re watching now might be more competitive than [London run club] Bandit or Hoka’s [run club] in five years,” Roth says.
For brands and agencies, this signals a recalibration in where influence lives. No longer is it just about contracting an #ad OOTD from a big influencer, but about partnering with event hosts as creative collaborators and honouring their real-life communities as ecosystems with deep credibility and cultural pull. But this approach carries new risks: the margins for error are small, and brands must carefully consider how to contribute to these experiences without feeling extractive.
Why hosts are the new influencers of IRL culture
As digital trust continues to erode and consumers grow increasingly adept at identifying and ignoring anything that resembles traditional influencing, the terms of engagement are changing. AI-generated content is accelerating this trend, further blurring the boundaries of what is real and what is manufactured. “People don’t know what’s real anymore,” says Roth. “You build trust in ways that can’t be gamed. In-person is where the premium lies.”
The rise of the host is a reaction to the acceleration and eventual exhaustion of online life. As the pandemic forced people indoors, platforms like TikTok exploded, attention became a currency, and what began as a means of connection quickly transformed into a high-speed spectacle. “TikTok boomed in 2020 and 2021, and [that’s when] I think the true nature of ‘onlineness’ really became inherent to who Gen Z is,” says Roth.
PhD candidate, writer and content creator Maalvika Bhat describes this cultural moment as one of psychological whiplash. “We remember when ‘BRB’ meant something, when you could actually leave. Now we live in this liminal space where we’re never fully present anywhere because we’re always partially elsewhere — always accessible, always available for consumption.”
This state of constant availability has contributed to a renewed appetite for grounded, in-person interaction. “The deep yearning comes from this embodied memory of what it felt like to be fully present in a room full of people,” says Bhat. “To have conversations that couldn’t be screenshotted, to be awkward without it being documented, to change your mind without leaving a digital trail.”
“The host’s capital is their ability to gather people,” says Roth. “An influencer or a content creator is focused on producing content — their value is aesthetic or performance-based. But a host creates sustainable, in-person belonging. We believe that the host is the next influential archetype because they hold the most valuable thing in culture today: social capital.”
But authenticity is crucial, he adds. “In the early influencer days, you might’ve said yes to promoting a vacuum. It was just content. But imagine showing up to a run club and there’s a vacuum on the table? That sends a message: we’ve sold out.”
Rules of engagement
Of course, many of the communities driving today’s offline culture were already engaging with brands well before platforms like Offline, and are aware of both the benefits and risks. “I use the same filter for brand partnerships that I use in my own life: will I learn something? Will I have fun? Will it expand my earnings or career? I only say yes if at least one box is ticked, and I want the same to be true for the people attending,” Douglas says. She believes the most common misstep is when brands lead with internal KPIs rather than community value. “Too often, experiences are built backwards with campaign objectives dictating every detail,” she says. “The result is something that might perform on social, but doesn’t land in the room.”
There’s also growing resistance to transactional logic. “A red flag is the brand making us justify the budget, not just in terms of the real-world work we’re doing or the experiences we’re delivering, but by asking what ROI you’ll get,” Douglas adds. “My community is not your commodity, we’re people, not data points on a pitch deck. When a brand leads with ‘what’s in it for us’, it shows they don’t actually understand how the community works. It’s not a transactional space; it’s built on trust, care, and long-term investment.”
Roth argues that measuring success in this space requires a fundamental reframe in perspective. While many brands continue to approach community activations through a traditional experiential marketing lens, standard metrics fall short. “They know it matters,” he says. “They just don’t know how much. That’s the biggest challenge for this category: measurement.”
Influencer campaigns can be tracked through impressions, reach and conversions, but the value of a three-hour, in-person experience is harder to quantify. Offline’s answer is a new metric: quality time spent. For instance, one of their recent activations delivered over 90,000 minutes of face-to-face engagement — a figure Roth believes will help brands recognise the depth of connection these gatherings generate. “We’re starting to assign real value to time,” he says. “Because that’s where loyalty lives.”
There’s also the question of how brands should show up in these spaces. “There have been events where there are more brand reps than community members. Or a camera crew in your face the whole time. Or a list of deliverables that makes the whole thing feel like a commercial shoot,” agrees Zaineb Abelque, co-founder of Athene Club, an outdoor community for woman-presenting folks. “That’s when the space stops feeling like it’s ours.”
Pressure to scale can also come with compromises. “We’ve had brands offer budgets we never imagined — but only if we opened the space up to men,” adds co-founder Liv Jank. “We tried it once. It didn’t work. We’ve learned from that. For us, this has to stay women-only.”
The success of a partnership, Roth explains, hinges on shared investment. “The easiest way to show up is usually the least effective,” he says. “The strongest outcomes come from co-creation — when both sides are committed, not just contractually, but culturally. It’s not: ‘Here’s a cheque, goodbye.’ It’s: ‘We’re in this with you, across the next 15 events.’ That’s how you build real community.”
Saturation is another growing concern. “It feels like everyone’s starting a run club now,” continues Abelque. “Which is fine — it’s good people want to create. But like anything, if you don’t put time and intention in, it won’t last. We’re not chasing numbers. We’ve always stayed small, on purpose. But now it feels like everyone’s boasting about getting 300 people on a hike. That’s not safe. That’s not thoughtful. No one’s asking: what are the intentions of the people showing up?”
In a culture overwhelmed with content and driven by algorithmic churn, the ability to foster meaningful in-person connection has become both rare and valuable. For brands, the opportunity lies in recognising that access to these communities cannot be bought in the traditional sense. But for those who get it right, the rewards are high.
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