What if I told you there’s a form of advertising where we no longer need to interrupt…

What if I told you there’s a form of advertising where we no longer need to interrupt consumers and hope they care?

Instead, we can truly engage with them, not just to entertain, but to bring value and meaningful experiences. So powerful, that people go out of their way to watch and share with others.

I walked into an interesting talk at AdWeek on exactly this.

Branded Entertainment.

Very few brands in this day and age can proudly say they stand for something, who don’t just have a customer base, but a tribe of like-minded individuals who have fallen in love with the brand.

Too many brands are advertising by the book.

An 11-inch print ad, a 30-second TV ad, or a 300-pixel display ad.

Customers have stopped looking and have stopped caring, they’ve seen it all before.

Yet we still continue the same motions.

Why are more brands not taking advantage of the opportunities of today? What happened to creativity, storytelling, and transformational experiences?

We now have a virtually unlimited creative canvas, brands can create utility and tell stories in entirely new ways.

Branded entertainment offers content that people actually want to watch.

It seamlessly blends branded content with entertainment, creating a more enjoyable and less intrusive experience.

The best example of this is ‘F1: Drive to Survive.’

The show offers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the world of Formula 1. Now on its fifth series, since being released in 2019, F1 race viewership in the US is up by 70%. With a staggering 53% of US F1 fans crediting "Drive to Survive" as a reason they became viewers of F1 races​.

I recently watched ‘Air’ on Prime Video and for me, this was the perfect reminder of why I and millions of others buy from Nike.

AIR tells the story between a then-rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division which revolutionised the world of sports and culture with the Air Jordan brand.

At the height of their success, Nike took a risk. It paid off with one of the greatest sports players of all time and a billion-dollar brand.

There would have been millions who spent 1 hour and 54 minutes watching a film on why Nike took that risk. While I don’t have the stats to back it up, this film would have driven more affinity for Nike as a brand than any advertisement ever could in 30 seconds.

Creating content that shows deep storytelling builds a true relationship between the brand and its audience.

One based on open communication, loyalty and understanding.

Getting the audience to care.

Humans were designed to tell stories, a tool we’ve used for thousands of years and the most powerful form of communication.

And this is why I believe Branded Entertainment is one of the few areas in which there is an opportunity to make a difference, not just in consumers' lives, but to build brands with a true purpose.

As in a world of endless competition, brands need purpose more than ever.