Christian Jacobsen, Founder and CEO of The Many

The Participation Exchange Newsletter

Participation is the human operating system.

The Participation Atlas

Participation Marketing Essays and Atlas

Christian Jacobsen is the co-founder and CEO of The Many, a 17-year-old Santa Monica agency, and the author of a growing body of work centered on participation marketing. His writing spans two primary platforms: a Substack newsletter called The Participation Exchange, which has published more than 30 pieces in 2026, and his home base at "Participation is the human operating system," where he develops his core argument that humans are fundamentally wired to participate. Together, these outlets position Jacobsen as a practitioner-turned-theorist examining why traditional persuasion models have lost their effectiveness and what approaches are emerging to replace them.

The research stack is designed specifically for food and beverage brand marketers who are evaluating agencies. It brings together Jacobsen's essays alongside The Participation Atlas, a companion reference that maps the frameworks underlying his participation marketing thinking. The Atlas functions as a structured guide to the concepts introduced across his written work, giving readers a more systematic way to engage with the ideas rather than encountering them only through individual essays.

Taken as a whole, this collection offers brand marketers a focused intellectual resource built around a single, consistent point of view: that persuasion-based marketing is declining and that participation-oriented strategies represent a more durable path forward. The materials are authored entirely by Jacobsen, grounding the stack in the perspective of someone who leads an active agency while simultaneously developing and publishing the theoretical frameworks behind his practice.