What This Chapter Covers

This chapter explains why the traditional marketing funnel breaks down when applied to entertainment, introduces the entertainment funnel as a more accurate model, and shows how brands misallocate resources when they confuse the two.

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The Problem Is Not Content. It Is the Model Behind It.

Most brands do not fail at entertainment because the content is bad. They fail because they apply the marketing funnel to something that behaves nothing like marketing.

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For decades, the marketing funnel has shaped how brands think about growth. Awareness leads to consideration. Consideration leads to conversion. Conversion leads to loyalty. It is linear, measurable, and designed for media environments where brands control distribution.

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Entertainment doesn't work this way.

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When brands try to force entertainment into the marketing funnel, they optimize for the wrong outcomes, measure the wrong signals, and often walk away too early, wondering why something that “worked creatively” did not perform commercially.

 

The issue is not execution. It is the framework.

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The Marketing Funnel Assumes Control

The traditional marketing funnel is built on a few core assumptions:

• Brands can buy attention

• Audiences are reachable on demand

• Messaging can be sequenced and optimized

• Performance improves through repetition

 

This model works when brands purchase media to drive audiences toward a defined action. It breaks down when brands participate in culture.

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Entertainment is not consumed because it is efficient like media buys. It is consumed because it is compelling.

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Audiences do not move through entertainment on a predictable path. They discover it. They sample it. They abandon it. They return to it. They share it. Sometimes months or years later.

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That's hard to clearly map to an ad funnel.

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Entertainment Doesn't Always Immediately Convert. It Compounds.

One of the most common mistakes brands make is asking entertainment to behave like a direct response channel.

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What entertainment actually does is different.

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Entertainment builds familiarity.
It builds affinity.
It builds memory.
It builds credibility.

It builds a more human connection. 

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These effects do not always spike on a media schedule, but they do compound over time.

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When brands judge entertainment using short-term performance metrics, they often conclude it is inefficient. In reality, they are measuring it with the wrong ruler.

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Introducing the Entertainment Funnel
The entertainment funnel is not linear. It is behavioral.

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Rather than pushing audiences toward an action, it describes how audiences naturally engage with content they enjoy.

At a high level, the entertainment funnel looks like this:

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1. Discovery: Audiences encounter content organically or through recommendations (from friends and social media to Netflix's algorithm)

2. Engagement: They choose to spend time with it. Attention is voluntary, not rented.

3. Emotional Connection: Characters, stories, or moments create resonance. This is where brands earn meaning by association.

4. Cultural Participation: Audiences share, reference, quote, and revisit the content. It becomes part of the conversation.

5. Long-Term Brand Impact: Brand preference, recall, and trust increase over time, often without a single measurable conversion moment.

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This is why entertainment rarely shows up cleanly in attribution models but shows up clearly in brand health over time.

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Where Brands Go Wrong

Brands often make three predictable mistakes when they confuse funnels.

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First, they over-optimize the creative for messaging rather than for story, which weakens the content and reduces engagement.

Second, they underinvest in distribution patience, expecting immediate results from something designed to build over time.

Third, they pull out too early, declaring failure before the compounding effect has had a chance to materialize.

 

In contrast, brands that understand the entertainment funnel set different expectations, fund projects differently, and measure success more holistically.

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How the Four Pillars Map to the Entertainment Funnel

Each of the four pillars introduced in Chapter 1 interacts with the entertainment funnel differently. 

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Product placement lives primarily in emotional connection and cultural participation. It creates a psychological effect and works best when it's neither too overt nor too subtle, and when it's repeated over time. If you're interested in learning the difference between good and successful product placement, click here. 

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Storyline integration accelerates engagement and emotional connection by embedding the brand directly into narrative moments.

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Promotional partnerships amplify discovery by borrowing attention from entertainment audiences at scale, and when used in advertising, they drive better outcomes than a traditional ad.

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Long-form brand-funded content spans the entire funnel, from discovery through long-term impact, when executed with discipline and patience.

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Understanding this mapping is what allows brands to choose the right pillar for the right business objective.

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Why This Distinction Matters

When brands apply the entertainment funnel correctly, several things change.

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Creative decisions improve because the goal is resonance, not repeated messaging.

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Measurement becomes more honest by focusing on indicators such as recall, affinity, and engagement.

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Budgets become more strategic, allocated with an understanding that entertainment is an investment, not a media buy.

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Most importantly, brands stop asking entertainment to justify itself using the wrong language and start evaluating it against the outcomes it is actually designed to produce. 

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The Shift Brands Must Make
The future of brand growth is not about abandoning marketing. It is about recognizing where marketing ends and entertainment begins.

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Brands that continue to force entertainment into a marketing framework will struggle to unlock its full value.

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Brands that adopt an entertainment mindset will build relevance that lasts longer than any campaign.

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Where This Leads Next

If Chapter 1 defines the tools and Chapter 2 defines the mindset, the next chapters address execution.

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In Chapter 3, we examine product placement in detail, not as a relic of the past, but as a discipline that has evolved and grown more powerful as advertising has lost its grip.

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Who This Chapter Is For

• Brand leaders evaluating entertainment investments

• CMOs struggling to measure content performance

• Marketing teams applying performance logic to cultural work

• Studios and creators partnering with brands

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Chapter 2 is the hinge point of The BRANDVIEW Playbook.

 

It explains why brands struggle with entertainment even when they believe in it, reframes success in a way that aligns with how audiences actually behave, and it sets up every executional chapter that follows.

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