Niche Is the New Mass
David Shing, the Digital Prophet, has been saying the same thing for a decade: niche is the new mass. In this conversation he unpacks what that means in practice, why feel is the most undervalued marketing metric, and how the industry has moved from attention as the economy to intention as the economy.
“There are only three things in marketing: performance, storytelling, and feel. Brands that understand collaboration will succeed.”
David Shing is a designer, strategist, and one of the advertising industry’s most distinctive voices on where digital culture is heading and why most brands are too slow to notice. Known globally as Shingy, he spent more than a decade as Digital Prophet at AOL and its successor companies before establishing his own practice, helping brands think more clearly about where attention, affinity, and design intersect.
David trained as a graphic designer, which informs everything about how he thinks: he looks for design first, asks whether a brand leads trends or follows them, and believes that any creative output should function as an entry point to a broader emotional relationship. He graduated into the last generation of traditional print designers before teaching himself to work digitally, an experience that gave him both technical depth and a healthy scepticism about the reverence any new platform attracts.
His nine-plus years at AOL as Digital Prophet, and subsequent roles at Oath and Verizon Media, made him one of the most recognisable figures at the intersection of media, technology, and creativity. He presented to clients, agencies, and conferences across the world, consistently leading thinking on collaboration, platform strategy, and the difference between what brands think consumers want and what resonates. He now operates independently under the Shingy name, advising brands and speaking globally.
“I used to say attention is the new economy. Now it’s intention.”
“For 10 years I have been saying that niche is the new mass. I truly mean it.”
The argument is not that mass reach is irrelevant. It is that the path to mass impact now runs through specific, tightly defined communities rather than through undifferentiated broadcast. The brands that understand specificity win accordingly.
“Performance, storytelling, and feel. The one nobody focuses on is feel. What do I get when I feel a brand?”
David frames modern brand strategy around three things: performance, storytelling, and feel. Of the three, feel is the least discussed and the most durable. Performance metrics change with the platform. Stories can be copied. The way a brand makes you feel is much harder to replicate.
“Pulling your phone out in a conversation is an intention. That is very different from attention.”
Attention was the right frame when brands were competing for passive eyeballs. Intention captures something more valuable: the deliberate act of reaching for a device, interrupting a real-world moment, to engage with something specific. The brands worth building earn intention rather than merely intercept attention.
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