Studios aren’t the only way brands are getting more involved in entertainment production. In December, Sugar23 and production and distribution company Fifth Season launched a three-year, $100 million co-financing project with advertisers. This is another way entertainment production companies work with marketers. All of this lays the groundwork for marketers to move beyond mostly creating advertising that interrupts programming people want to watch to (potentially) create just that kind of entertainment.

“Brands have spent decades, many decades, renting other people’s stories,” said Paul Furia, head of content and creative packaging at independent agency Media by Mother, adding that cutting network programming made sense when there was a captive audience. which had to be tuned. meeting viewing, but streaming models have changed the game. “The audience has all the choice and all the control. Building your own studio flips the script. Why pay to interrupt someone else’s story when you can fund and tell your own story that’s built on your brand DNA and engages your target demos in a way that’s right for your brand?”

In 2025, Furia expects more large retailers to continue to set up shop with their own branded studios. Marketers regularly ask how they can move from disruption to “more engaging storytelling,” Furia noted. He’s not alone in seeing increased interest in potential studios and ways for brands to get involved in creating entertainment properties. Marketers, ad agency executives and entertainment industry representatives anecdotally say there has been steady interest throughout 2024 and expect it to continue into 2025. How much of that interest turns into brand studio announcements will depend on the level of interest from marketers and also on success. stories of brands that are already doing it.

Brand studies are still in the initial stages of launching this work. But bosses there said they were likely to start showing some original work this year. Of course, there are already world-class Barbie and Lego movies that brands should consider, but these massive blockbusters are the exception rather than the norm for what branded entertainment will be.

It takes a lot more time to make a movie or TV show than a 30 second commercial. And there’s “a lot of collaboration” in that ecosystem, explained Matt Rotondo, head of brands at Sugar23, who added that the main headwinds for companies like his when brands consider setting up studios are “bad experiences” from the past, as well as “misunderstanding of how things work.”

“We’re trying to remove as much friction as possible and overcome those perennial hurdles,” Rotondo said. The call for brands to create branded studios and have a bigger stake in TV and movies is simple for Rotondo: “Entertainment is a loyalty program,” he said. “That’s why you keep your Netflix subscription, your Paramount+ subscription, because of the originals you can only get there.” If brands were able to offer people this kind of entertainment, it is believed that this would give brands a deeper connection with their potential consumers and ultimately lead to greater loyalty.

Meanwhile, one brand studio announced in 2023 is one to watch for this year. In April 2023, French fashion house Saint Laurent launched its own production company, Saint Laurent Productions. If you tuned into the Golden Globes earlier this month and saw Netflix’s Emelia Perez accept the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy, you also saw a brand-financed film win big. Saint Laurent co-produced the film directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Selena Gomez, Karla Sofia Gascon and Zoe Saldana.

“[Marketers] they always want to create more ways to reach people because now there are so many different generations that consume very differently [than before]” said Jennifer Cowan, vice president of entertainment at The Marketing Arm, which specializes in product placement and brand integration.

The question is not so much whether marketers will continue to make deals to create brand studios, but how their content will be received. “If brands can deliver that kind of quality content, I don’t think audiences care who it’s from,” Furia said. “They just have to focus on being storytellers, not salespeople.”