How Brands Use Entertainment To Create Blockbuster Moments
To snatch attention share and enhance brand memorability, Brand Universes are turning to entertainment in an attempt to bridge creativity and commerce.
This article, which in the full version of this research report appears under the chapter title ‘Part 3: The Creative-Commerce Link’, is part 9/12 of The Next Big Bang: The Brand Universe Solution to Growth, the inaugural research thesis by edition+partners, distributed here on SOTA. In the ever-evolving landscape of brand development, the concept of a Brand Universe emerges as both a tangible entity and a strategic methodology, offering a dynamic approach to brand survival and growth.
TL;DR
Advertising your brand’s product is no longer enough to excite consumers. Instead, brands need to prioritise their role as entertainers.
With 65% of consumers finding content from their favourite fashion brands more inspiring than that from media publications, the best Brand Universes are transforming into new media entities.
Successful Brand Universes invest in narrative-driven commerce throughout the entire purchase journey, create original content formats, and blur the lines between inspiring and selling.
Brands that are hyper-aware of what’s going on in cultural conversations, and who are able to react at speed, are favoured by consumers over brands perceived as laggards.
Last week, the world’s largest luxury group, LVMH, announced the creation of its newest division. Together with entertainment creators, producers, and distributors, ‘22 Montaigne Entertainment’, will be looking to create film, TV, audio, and other entertainment narratives around its 70 luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët & Chandon, and Sephora.
Like its main rival Kering, whose holding company Artemis recently acquired Hollywood talent agency CAA, and whose foray into film with the launch of ‘The House of Gucci’ cemented its presence in a new creative industry (the film grossed $166 million to date), LVMH will be looking to Disney-fy its IP. In this case, it’s the craft, the personalities behind the brands, and the narrative of its heritage of its storied luxury brands within its growing portfolio.
In recent years, however, the fashion industry's foray into entertainment and media has evolved beyond mere acquisitions and the establishment of entertainment sister companies. Brands are now strategically transforming themselves into media entities, and integrating engaging narrative-driven marketing throughout the entire purchasing funnel. Moreover, they’re responding to the wider cultural conversation with quick, viral, content, and now also product to purchase off the back of it all.
Now, while identifying new customer segments, and expanding into new territories like hospitality, home goods, and like LVMH even entertainment, are certainly critical pillars of building one’s Brand Universe, these steps alone won’t lead directly to financial gains. To enhance brand memorability and accelerate commercial growth, brands must innovate across the purchase journey when bridging the realms of creativity and commerce.
Despite the significant expansion of platforms and touchpoints used by brands post-pandemic, prevailing tactics, formats, and sales approaches in traditional brand building remain largely repetitive.
Brand Universes set themselves apart by redefining narrative strategies, seamlessly integrating conversion into the brand story, and by blurring the traditional lines that once separated inspiration and sales. This includes regaining control from third parties, emphasising their roles as entertainers, and creating unique marketing and commercial formats that, like products, become synonymous with the brand, together keeping customers hooked.
Brands Are the New Media Entities
Brands, in essence, are transforming into new media entities. We’ve said this for years. According to our survey, 65% of consumers find content from their favourite fashion brands more inspiring than that from media publications. The vast majority of brands we interviewed for this report align with this sentiment, indicating their intent to boost investments in their own channels in the upcoming years. This shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Brands have been gradually reducing their reliance on third parties for both retail operations and social influence. While third parties were once vital as industry translators, their influence has significantly dwindled. Over the past decade, as big advertisers have increasingly clouded the editorial judgement and independence of publishers, and the steep discounting of brands by third-party retailers has continued, brands have found refuge internally.
Industry giants including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Dior now operate independently, for the majority selling directly via their own channels. Meanwhile each boasts larger social followings than those of self-proclaimed style bibles Vogue, GQ, and I-D Magazine.
This, paired with the fact that the price of acquiring new customers through paid digital marketing has tripled over the past decade, means that brands who are literate in new media and who embrace new selling platforms, have urged brands to rethink their strategies.
Those who embrace the shift of becoming credible media and entertainment outlets in their own right, regaining control over both their messaging and selling calendars as a result, come out ahead. With a newfound confidence, the repetitive seasonal fashion cycle set and benefitted by third parties is questioned.
When a brand isn’t solely reliant on the endorsement of old industry gatekeepers, it can inspire, engage, and sell to their community simultaneously, and at any time. Although third parties are crucial for reach and discovery, smart brands leverage them as a means to an end, not the end itself.
Posting a campaign on Instagram, partnering with brand ambassadors on content, or putting up a window display to advertise the latest collection, however, won’t cut it for those venturing out on their own. Brand Universes move beyond this traditional product and brand advertising tone which has historically been about reaching a target audience with a singular message, following indistinguishable templates, distributed via the same set of channels.
Instead, Brand Universes invest in narrative-driven commerce, creating original content formats to the exacting standards long reserved for a brand’s product creation. By leveraging existing platforms — from social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, KakaoTalk, Douyin, and Line to wider media entities like Fortnite, Netflix, Discord, Spotify, and Twitch — and expand their reach and capabilities without the need to create expensive, standalone media entities from scratch.
And then some.