How to turn your ads into entertainment

Brands deeply influence our culture, and vice versa. Sometimes brands are the culture—I’m thinking Fenty, Apple, Mercedes, and Nike, to name just a few.



But all companies—even those premier brands—need to find a way to slice through the bombardment of messages consumers see each day online, at home, and out in the world. What we’ve found is that, when a brand makes actual entertainment, viewers don’t mind the interruption to their programming (some people watch the Super Bowl just for the ads), and will even go so far as to seek out more when the teaser hooks them in the right way.



We’ve been fortunate enough to make truly entertaining content for brands, including films, podcasts, and web series. But not every brand can afford those big projects. What’s the answer? To make the ads themselves entertainment.



How to turn an ad into entertainment



Any brand, regardless of size or type, can create compelling content. My favorite example of an ad as entertainment is the 2011 Volkswagen Darth Vader spot. It’s a cute story about a kid who tries to use the Dark Side to influence things around the house (including the dog!) and he’s disappointed until Dad stealthily starts the car remotely. This piece taught us so many things about what advertising can be, and how important nuance is. There wasn’t one hint of “buy now!” in the ad. It remains one of the greatest commercials of all time.



Yes, the Darth Vader ad was for the Super Bowl. But there’s no reason to save your best work for special occasions. Brands can tell their stories, and create entertainment, all year round. Here’s how.



Pick a creative partner. There are thousands of ad agencies that would love to do business with you; tons of production companies would also like to take your money. My advice is to find a partner that straddles both worlds. You want an experienced creative partner who truly understands how to craft your brand story while appreciating the pacing, legalities, and nuances of the advertising and entertainment business. Our agency works with people from the advertising industry as well as Hollywood so that we can pull the best ideas and practices from both worlds. Create a “writers’ room.” A robust collaboration results in a better final product. In a traditional ad agency, creatives often compete among themselves to win business. In ours, we collaborate to bring all good ideas to the table, much like television writers do in the writers’ room. This way, we’re able to multiply our creativity, and double-check ourselves before we bring the idea to the client. Is it having the desired emotional impact? Is it culturally sensitive? Is the tone correct? Can we build out this world a little better? Is it truly entertaining? Speaking of worlds, build a world. Yes! You can do it in 30 seconds! The award-gobbling show, Ted Lasso , started as a series of short promos for NBC Sports centered around a compelling character played by Jason Sudeikis. Think hard about the characters that help tell the story. What’s the world they inhabit and how can you show that in a short amount of time? All the work you put into world-building as you create the spot will pay off with the dividend of a better brand story. Idea flow before deal flow. Often, advertisers sign a big deal with talent and then back into an idea to fit that talent. We prefer to come up with the initial idea first and then identify talent that we think is going to be perfect for the idea. By doing this, we’re able to get talent excited about the initial idea, and about collaborating with us to get to the final product rather than just dangling a check in front of them to start the conversation. Ideas are first so people get excited, and then we sort out the financials. With our Old Navy show, Lil Interns , Kenan Thompson was not only our star, but he actually came up with some of the ideas and wrote some of the jokes in partnership with our writers and team. Be original, every time. The sad reality of this business is that some pitches just don’t make it. We approach every project with a blank slate and put the time and creativity to develop a highly specific brief. A great idea for Ford won’t work for Chevy, because the brands have different DNA. They’re not interchangeable, and we owe our clients work tailor-made for them. (I’ll also mention that this approach also saves us the extreme awkwardness if the brand changes their mind as we haven’t rehashed it for someone else.)



Make the correct connections



Of course, none of the above matters unless you arrive at the intersection of where your creative work connects with audiences and is relevant to your brand. BMW did this beautifully way back in 2001 with its gritty campaign of mini James Bond-style action films called The Hire featuring A-listers in front of and behind the camera. It was such a perfect intersection of message, talent, and content that I actually bought the DVDs. Likewise, Chipotle and Patagonia have spent decades focusing on sustainability, so it makes sense for those brands to use that theme. They’ve earned the right to be in that space.



In the end, it comes down to what entertainment is, intrinsically, to the human experience. Art done right makes us feel something—joy, fear, compassion—whether we find it in an arthouse theater or a 15-second spot on our phone.



Brendan Shields-Shimizu is CEO at Observatory, a global, full-service creative ad agency with deep roots in entertainment and one of Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2020, 2021, and 2022.