Why Brands Need to Think Like Entertainment Companies

I learned something in entertainment that stayed useful long after I left it: attention is not the same as interest, and interest is not the same as emotional investment. In theater, television, and film, you learn very quickly that people do not give you their attention because you asked for it. You have to earn it, hold it, and create enough emotional connection that the experience stays with them.

That psychology has shaped how I think about brands ever since. A lot of marketing still treats attention as something to buy. Entertainment treats attention as something to deserve. That difference matters because people rarely build attachment through information alone. They respond to stories, symbols, familiarity, identity, surprise, belonging, and emotion.

That is why some brands feel larger than the products they sell. They create a world people want to be part of. The commercial value goes well beyond awareness because emotional connection creates memory, memory creates familiarity, and familiarity reduces perceived risk. Over time, familiarity can become trust.

Buyers may explain decisions rationally, but the path to a decision is rarely purely rational. People notice what feels relevant, remember what creates an emotional response, and trust what feels familiar and coherent. Logic often comes later, when they need to justify the decision.

That is where brand, customer experience, and sales start to blur together. A great brand story that never shows up in the customer experience is wasted. A sales motion that ignores how people form trust is inefficient. And a customer experience that contradicts the emotional promise of the brand can undo years of marketing very quickly.

My entertainment background taught me to look for the human mechanics underneath all of that: what creates curiosity, what makes someone lean in, what makes them feel understood, what makes them want to belong, and what makes an experience memorable enough to influence what they do next.

Those are not soft questions. They are commercial questions.

That is why I think more brands will continue borrowing from entertainment, not simply in the content they produce, but in how they design the entire experience around the customer. The brands that win will not necessarily be the ones that spend the most to get attention. They will be the ones that understand people well enough to create an emotional connection worth remembering.