Ten to fifteen years ago, most books on guerrilla and viral marketing were built around one idea: come up with such an unusual news hook that journalists would write about it. The media served as the main filter of audience attention. A company first convinced the editorial board, the editorial board published the material, and then the news spread further. Today, this chain in many cases works in the opposite direction. First, a story becomes popular among ordinary users, gains views, comments, and discussions, and only then do journalists pay attention to it. It turns out that the main object of work is not editorial boards, but communities where user-generated content is born.

This change is associated not only with the emergence of social networks, but also with a complete restructuring of media consumption. The user no longer opens several favorite sites in the morning and reads news sequentially. Algorithms show them individual posts, short videos, discussions on Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, X, and other platforms. The source of information becomes secondary, and the story itself becomes primary. Reuters Institute research shows that social platforms have become one of the main tools for journalists to find topics: about 70% of journalists regularly use social networks to search for potential news, opinions, and sources of information.

Because of this, the very mechanism of news emergence has changed. Many editorial boards no longer so much create the news agenda as track its emergence. It is enough to look at almost any news feed of recent years. Headlines like “The network is discussing…”, “Users noticed…”, “The video went viral…”, “The post gained millions of views…” have become familiar. Primary content appears in communities, and journalists verify information, collect comments, and turn it into a full-fledged news story. As a result, UGC becomes not an addition to the media, but a supplier of topics for them.

Research in recent years confirms this trend quantitatively. Reuters Institute notes that news is increasingly discovered by users through social networks and search engines, rather than directly on publisher websites. At the same time, the media brand itself becomes less visible, since a person consumes a separate story within the platform, rather than consciously coming to a specific publication. This means that the struggle for attention shifts from competition between media to competition of individual publications within algorithmic feeds.

This trend is even more pronounced among young audiences. According to Pew Research Center, a significant portion of young users regularly receive news not from traditional media, but from content creators on social networks. Among Americans aged 18–29, more than a third regularly receive news through influencers, and most such influencers have never worked in professional editorial offices. In other words, public attention is beginning to be shaped not only by journalists, but also by ordinary authors, bloggers, and active community members.

For business, this means a serious change in marketing strategy. If earlier a company compiled a list of journalists and sent out press releases, today it has to think completely differently. You need to create a story that real people will want to discuss. It should evoke emotions, arguments, a desire to share, forward to a friend, or record your own reaction. Only after the story begins to live its own life within the community does the likelihood that editorial boards will notice it appear. It turns out that modern media are becoming more of an amplifier of the viral effect than its source.

Therefore, modern guerrilla marketing can be formulated in one phrase: the task is no longer to get into the media. The task is to get into user-generated content. If a story begins to live in communities, the likelihood of it getting into the news agenda increases many times over. It is communities that become the new “editor” that determines which topics deserve wide distribution. In this sense, the main asset of a brand is no longer relationships with journalists, but the ability to create content that people will want to discuss without any motivation.