Earned Podcast: Jen Cho, Chief Customer Officer at CreatorIQ hosts Sharon Mussali, CEO of NowThis
The media landscape has transformed dramatically over the last decade. Algorithms shape discovery. Short-form video has changed how audiences consume entertainment. Creators have become powerful cultural voices, and social platforms have become major distribution engines.
For Sharon Mussalli, CEO of NowThis, the foundation of a successful media business remains remarkably consistent: create something people genuinely love.
On a recent episode of Earned, CreatorIQ Chief Customer Officer Jennifer Cho sat down with Sharon to explore what makes brands endure, how NowThis is evolving from a publisher into an entertainment network, and why creators, intellectual property, and community are becoming increasingly connected.
The conversation offered a clear vision for the future of media. Sustainable growth starts with compelling IP, deep audience connection, and a willingness to keep evolving alongside culture.
Sharon has spent more than two decades building and scaling businesses across media, entertainment, and technology. Across those experiences, she has found one principle that consistently separates enduring brands from the rest.
People need to love what you create.
As Sharon recalled, a former CEO once told her, “They can’t like your brand, they have to love it.”
That distinction has become central to how she thinks about NowThis. In a crowded media environment, audiences have nearly endless options for where to spend their attention. Creating content that people simply enjoy leaves plenty of room for something else to take its place. Love creates a much deeper relationship.
For NowThis, that means developing shows and franchises that inspire audiences to say, “Oh my God, I love that show. I love that content.”
Reaching that level of affinity takes time and intention. Sharon sees it as one of the foundations of a sustainable media business because audiences organize their interests and communities around the stories and properties that mean something to them.
That love also needs to be continuously earned. Social media changes quickly, from formats and trends to personalities and consumption habits. NowThis approaches that reality through constant iteration, rebuilding and evolving its programming as audience behavior shifts.
As Sharon explained, long-term success comes from combining audience love with cultural relevance. Brands need to remain top of mind while continuing to give people reasons to care.
That philosophy has shaped the next chapter of NowThis.
The company is increasingly focused on recurring shows and franchises, including properties such as Are You Okay?, Judgy, and Standup Desk. Sharon sees this shift toward original IP as an important part of building a more sustainable media company.
Her model draws from the entertainment industry. Audiences frequently develop deep attachments to individual movies, shows, and characters. Those properties become the center of fandom.
Sharon believes social-first media can operate similarly.
When audiences love an individual show, that IP can grow alongside them. It can move across platforms, inspire communities, create immersive experiences, and eventually become part of a much larger world.
Social platforms are already producing examples of this model. Sharon pointed to Hot Ones from First We Feast as an example of content born in digital media that developed an identity and audience of its own.
For NowThis, the opportunity is to create properties with that same capacity for expansion.
“If you create IP that people love and you stay with them,” Sharon explained, the opportunity expands into “world building, immersive fan experiences and so on.”
This approach places audience passion at the center of the business model. Each successful franchise becomes an opportunity to deepen the relationship between the story, its personalities, and the community surrounding it.
Social media has fundamentally changed how content reaches people.
Discovery is increasingly algorithmic. Audiences encounter entertainment through For You Pages and personalized feeds. Content competes for attention on a screen people carry everywhere.
Sharon sees these developments as changes in distribution. The core principles of media remain rooted in great content and compelling personalities.
“Great content is great content and great personalities are great personalities,” she said.
That philosophy gives media companies a useful framework for navigating constant platform change. Distribution strategies can evolve with audience behavior while the creative foundation remains centered on stories and people worth following.
For Sharon, this also explains the natural relationship between media companies and creators.
Creators frequently build communities around shared interests, humor, opinions, products, and entertainment. They react to culture and help audiences make sense of it through a personal point of view. A creator might respond to a television show, a beauty product, a fashion moment, or an original NowThis series and bring their own community into the conversation.
That participation extends the world around the original content.
Creators become part of the ecosystem surrounding IP, helping communities interact with stories in ways that feel personal, social, and participatory. The relationship between creators, audiences, and media can keep expanding as each group contributes something to the conversation.
One of the most important ideas running through Sharon and Jennifer’s conversation was the growing connection between content and community.
People increasingly experience media alongside groups of people they may never meet offline. They follow the same creators, react to the same cultural moments, and develop shared language around the things they love.
Jennifer described the experience as having online friend groups and participating in a watch party with people you do not personally know.
Sharon immediately recognized the feeling. When she watches creators herself, she can feel a personal connection to them, even knowing that the creator has no idea who she is.
That sense of connection helps explain why personality-driven media has become so powerful. Audiences are building relationships around the people and stories they repeatedly invite into their lives.
For media companies, this creates an opportunity to think beyond individual pieces of content. A successful show can become a gathering point. A recognizable personality can create continuity. A franchise can give audiences something to return to, discuss, share, and build upon.
The result is a media experience that lives across an ecosystem of viewers, creators, personalities, and communities.
Sharon’s vision for NowThis ultimately comes back to sustainability.
Platforms will continue evolving. Formats will change. Algorithms will introduce new rules for discovery. New creators and cultural trends will constantly emerge.
The opportunity for media companies is to build something strong enough to travel through those changes.
That starts with IP people love. It grows through personalities audiences want to spend time with. It expands through creators and communities that participate in the conversation. And it requires media companies to continuously learn how audiences want to consume and engage with entertainment.
For marketers, Sharon’s perspective offers a broader lesson about building relevance in the creator economy. Attention alone is a limited goal. The deeper opportunity lies in creating something audiences want to belong to, talk about, and return to.
That is the difference between reaching an audience and building a fan base.
And for Sharon, that small distance between “I like it” and “I love it” can determine how far a brand, show, or media company ultimately goes.
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