We’ve had branded leisure since Procter & Gamble invented cleaning soap operas again within the Thirties. However at present, manufacturers are compelled to diversify the methods by which they achieve and maintain our consideration. It’s not as viable or efficient to depend upon conventional paid media instruments.
Progressive marketers are more and more investing in content material and experiences that entice and have interaction audiences somewhat than interrupt and annoy them. And the shift is driving outcomes. Manufacturers of all stripes speak about “model leisure,” however it’s the exceptions that really create precise leisure.
I’ve spent a whole lot of time this previous yr writing and speaking on the Brand New World podcast concerning the number of methods completely different manufacturers are doing this proper. From WhatsApp working with Fashionable Arts on a Netflix doc about the Mercedes F1 team, to Dick’s Sporting Items formally establishing an internal entertainment studio that has already received Sports activities Emmys for We May Be King in 2015 and The Turnaround in 2024, to the unprecedented deal struck between AB InBev and Netflix. The latter, signed in November, places the worldwide brewer’s main beer manufacturers entrance and heart in Netflix’s push into stay sports activities, in addition to giving it early entry to placement and integration in Netflix reveals and films.
Clearly manufacturers need the shine of authentic Hollywood leisure. However manufacturing prices and different monetary pressures have made working with manufacturers a way more enticing prospect for Hollywood too. So I needed to test again in with the executives behind a few of these initiatives to seek out out what they anticipate the most important developments will probably be in 2026.
Essentially the most vital drivers of those developments stem from the evolving platforms, fueled by viewers preferences and habits, in addition to the financial realities driving manufacturers and Hollywood into one another’s arms extra usually and in additional various methods.
Entrepreneurs—and audiences, for that matter—are going to see some huge modifications coming to screens, each huge and small. Learn on for what to anticipate.
Shifting platforms
Meta introduced on December 16 that it will start testing its Instagram for TV app within the U.S. on Amazon Hearth TV streaming gadgets. Zac Ryder, cofounder and co-chief artistic officer of Fashionable Arts, says this function goes to be a game-changer for model leisure. Manufacturers as various as UPS, Bud Mild, and Sephora have been constructing audiences on Instagram Reels and Tales, whereas different manufacturers are leaping into the micro-drama trend of serialized, bite-size cleaning soap operas in vertical video.
Ryder says this shift means model content material on the platform will proceed to look much more like leisure, getting longer and extra formidable to higher align with TV viewing habits. In the end, this may additional blur the strains between leisure and social.
Ryder says that consequently we’ll begin to see extra huge swings that includes A-list storytellers and expertise this yr. “This will probably be very true for manufacturers who’re already very invested in IG and have spent years constructing their followers. And naturally, if manufacturers are going to begin dropping extra formidable work on IG, they’ll drop it on YouTube as effectively,” he says. “So as to compete for model {dollars}, streamers might want to grow to be even higher companions to manufacturers, all of which is able to create much more vitality on this area and lift the bar even greater.”
A rising variety of persons are watching YouTube (and shortly, Instagram Reels) on their TVs. In the meantime, streamers like Netflix and Disney+ are more and more using model partnerships to maintain subscriber costs aggressive. Lots of my sources imagine these altering dynamics of how we watch and have interaction with leisure will drive the place manufacturers can discover one of the best alternatives.
“I think we’ll see extra next-generation partnerships like these we’ve been concerned with this previous yr, particularly because the Warner Bros. factor kinds itself out,” says Jae Goodman, cofounder and CEO of Superconnector Studios. “I guess Skydance/Paramount, Disney, Amazon, Comcast/NBCU will all come to market with manufacturers as true companions in stunning, revolutionary, mutually useful, and I guess very efficient methods.”
A brand new technique
Goodman helped dealer the Netflix-AB InBev deal and has additionally helped giants like Nike and LVMH arrange their leisure methods. He says the long-standing trajectory of how manufacturers and Hollywood do enterprise has basically modified.
Sometimes, it’s TV networks and streamers promoting advert area to media companies, then artistic companies filling the order. Movie studios and distributors promote partnerships to manufacturers, then licensing and promotional companies get artistic with the mental property.
“Manufacturers are actually getting into the market with actual leisure methods,” Goodman says. “And types are main the dialog with leisure entities by asking, ‘What if we needed to realize XYZ after which work out the construction and price?’ We confer with it as concept stream earlier than deal stream.”
This previous yr, the Martin Company labored with Subway Takes creator Kareem Rahma on “UPS Business Trips.” Martin’s chief model officer, Elizabeth Paul, believes branded leisure is rising up and transferring from bloated bandwagons with a whole bunch of brand name sponsors (see: Depraved) to fewer initiatives with a extra centered viewers.
UPS is a serious model that would simply soar on the blockbuster film bandwagon or make a Tremendous Bowl advert. As an alternative, “UPS Enterprise Journeys” was a comparatively small, Subway Takes-inspired collection by which Rahma and UPS drivers go to small-business prospects. Based on the company, it had greater than 100 million views throughout platforms, and generated 1,000% return on advert spend.
“For many who actually imagine within the area, model leisure will cease being handled as a marketing campaign format and begin being managed as a portfolio,” says Paul, who means that one of the best manufacturers will begin considering like studios, not advertising departments.
We’ve seen this most just lately with Dick’s Sporting Items’s new in-house studio division, Cookie Jar & a Dream Studios. Dick’s CMO Emily Silver advised me again in September that this transfer will see the model be extra aggressive within the variety of movies and items of content material it releases, in addition to assist the model construct extra of a reputation for itself within the leisure trade to draw completely different writers and initiatives.
“It offers us the chance to place a little bit extra construction and framework round what content material we need to produce and the place we need to lean in to assist construct for the long run,” she stated on the time.
New economics
Essentially the most vital issue within the tempo of brand name leisure’s evolution is the enterprise crucial from either side to make the economics work. North American field workplace income for 2025 was more than 20% lower than pre-pandemic levels. And within the first half of 2025, main streamers ordered 24% fewer first-run and renewed scripted titles than the identical interval in 2024.
As manufacturing prices have skyrocketed, and the flexibility to get leisure initiatives off the bottom harder, Hollywood’s usually cool condescension towards entrepreneurs has thawed to the purpose of giddy embrace. Cynically, even when Hollywood sees manufacturers as logo-plastered ATMs, manufacturers see a possibility to use this want for money to do cool issues which might be precise leisure.
“Final yr, financial stress compelled entrepreneurs to be actually choiceful with their media plans, which compelled intentionality,” says Paul. “As manufacturers received extra selective, essentially the most profitable collaborations meant fewer swings with clearer artistic intent. The outcome wasn’t louder model leisure, however extra thought-about work—initiatives that revered fandom, embraced specificity, and trusted audiences to fulfill manufacturers midway.”
Paul cites the Martin Company’s work on Bud Light’s Armchair Quarterback final yr, a Netflix partnership starring Peyton Manning that parodies the second season of the streamer’s present Quarterback. Armchair Quarterback attracted greater than 100 million social impressions, thanks in no small half to tapping into the fandom of Quarterback by working with the present, its producers—Manning’s Omaha Productions—and Netflix.
Nevertheless, she reiterates that this will’t be a easy “alternate of relevance for money. That is about forging true strategic partnerships that delight followers and transfer markets.”
Expertise magnet
The connection between Hollywood and types has advanced considerably over the previous yr. Model partnerships and content material are usually not embarrassing for studios or streamers anymore, partly due to the aforementioned economics, but in addition as a result of the standard is greater and the worth is obvious.
WhatsApp’s movie The Seat, for instance, value about as a lot as it will to make and purchase advert time for a 60-second industrial. Nevertheless it additionally was excessive sufficient high quality to face by itself on Netflix. This can be a virtuous cycle: The higher the standard, the upper caliber of expertise is drawn to subsequent initiatives, which in flip ought to proceed to spice up the caliber of those initiatives.
Ryder says a rising variety of A-list showrunners, writers, administrators, and creators have been reaching out to be taught extra concerning the model world in hopes of discovering a mission to work on collectively.
LVMH’s leisure division, 22 Montaigne, for instance, is developing projects with Reese Witherspoon’s Good day Sunshine, in addition to Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Think about Leisure.
“After we began making these sorts of brand name initiatives 10 years in the past, everybody on the expertise aspect was so suspicious,” Ryder says. Many believed model leisure was only a glorified lengthy industrial. That has modified as extra high-quality movies have dropped. “It’s a bit like a Michelin chef making an attempt a killer meals truck and realizing that could possibly be a brand new outlet for his or her cooking,” he says. “There are only a lot extra scrumptious meals vehicles on the market now.”
