In recent years, brands have increasingly incorporated content as a tactical planning variable within their communication strategies. Content marketing encompasses a set of communication techniques aimed at creating and distributing relevant content to attract a target audience that the brand has previously identified and understood (IAB, 2022).

To achieve this, brands deploy a wide array of formats and channels that allow them to reach consumers in a non-intrusive manner, delivering value through tailored content. This strategy is implemented via a distribution model that combines owned, paid, and earned media. Within this ecosystem, branded content is positioned as one of the core tools, coexisting with others such as native advertising and content curation. According to BCMA (2024), branded content is “a communication asset produced or co-produced by a brand which, through formats that serve an entertainment, informative, and/or utility function, aims to convey its values and connect with an audience that voluntarily dedicates attention to it when found relevant.”

Rather than focusing on traditional promotional approaches, branded content seeks to foster engagement by building relationships and shared experiences between the brand and its audience. Informative content environments are often referred to as branded information, while entertainment-driven productions fall under the category of branded entertainment (Del Pino-Romero et al., 2013).

Branded content is a broad category that includes any material funded by a brand for communication purposes, whether to inform, educate, or entertain. Branded entertainment, however, is the most ambitious and demanding form within this category. In branded entertainment, entertainment is not just optional but a core element. Its main goal is to create a cultural and entertainment piece that can compete for viewer attention alongside traditional entertainment like movies or TV shows. As a result, the success of branded entertainment is not measured by how clearly it promotes a product, but by its ability to tell a compelling and meaningful story where the brand is smoothly integrated—often acting as a key part of the story or reflecting its values. The important thing is that the story is self-sufficient and creates a real emotional bond, so the brand can connect with the audience through a shared experience (Donaton, 2005).

In this context, brands increasingly operate as content producers, creating audiovisual materials in formats traditionally associated with the entertainment industry—ranging from feature films and short films to digital series, documentaries, and television productions. Examples such as Mattel Films, BMW Films, and Red Bull illustrate this growing trend toward brand-led content production.

In social media algorithms and digital audience consumption patterns, content has become essential for strategic communication planning. Content marketing focuses on creating and sharing valuable, relevant content to attract and keep audiences, encouraging profitable customer actions (Content Marketing Institute, 2025). It combines communication techniques to produce content that engages target audiences identified by brands. Brands utilise various formats and channels to reach consumers subtly through customized content, using a distribution model that mixes owned, paid, and earned media. Branded content reinforces its character in this context.

Branded content is a marketing strategy based on the creation of original content by a brand, aimed at establishing a profound and genuine connection with its audience or customers to foster loyalty (Waqas et al., 2021). According to the Branded Content White Paper, it is defined as “the creation of relevant, entertaining, or engaging content with a non-advertising appearance, produced by a brand to attract and connect with its audience” (IAB, 2022, p. 8).

A branded content strategy aims to communicate the brand’s values and connect with an audience that, finding it relevant, voluntarily dedicates their attention to it (BCMA, 2022). Organisations regard this practice as a “highly significant communication asset” (Toledano et al., 2021, p. 33) due to the attention economy within the current communicational paradigm. However, these “communication assets” (BCMA, 2022) represent a new form of interaction, still uncertain in terms of its processes, techniques, and dynamics of production and distribution. In addition to engaging the user/viewer and fostering a medium- to long-term bond through entertaining, informative, educational, and/or useful content, it is essential to incorporate a business-oriented vision.

This study examines the creation of branded content initiatives within fictional audiovisual entertainment from the perspective of the creator, namely the brand. It focuses on the innovation of new advertising formats and how businesses can leverage them to better connect with their target audiences, a practice known in the field as brand films. Recent studies highlight the significance of the convergence between cultural industries and marketing (Hardy, 2021; Stolley and Glynne, 2022; Wu et al., 2020) as a topic of interest for both brands and creators. While collaborations between filmmakers and advertisers are not new, Nicolaou (2023) argues that the current context, defined by three digital influenced generations (Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z), presents cinematic advertising storytelling as a form of “multigenerational marketing” that effectively caters to the preferences of these segments despite their differing consumption patterns.

This research focuses on the field of audiovisual fiction, as López and Abanades (2015) demonstrates that branded content in its fiction-based formats—such as series, television, short films and other audiovisual media—is the most highly valued by advertisers and industry professionals.

According to the Scopen (2024) report, which measures the state and trends of the branded content industry in Spain, industry professionals express a preference to produce short films, alongside other formats such as brand events and documentaries. This preference is consistent with findings from other studies: (Sociograph, 2021), which indicated that audiovisual branded content achieves greater recall and emotional connection than other branded content formats and traditional advertising.

Cinema, in itself, is an appealing and powerful medium. As Seger (2000) argues, it can make us laugh and cry. Film characters concern us and prompt us to live their lives. Sometimes they inspire us or lead us to make new decisions. According to Seger a good story for cinema has direction. It moves toward a climax, and most scenes help advance the action; it has dimensionality; while it engages the viewer emotionally, it also reveals the characters and develops the themes. This study considers it essential to study the role of the brand within the process of writing a cinematic script for a branded entertainment project, to achieve an organic and non-intrusive brand integration.

The following pages examine the creation of branded content initiatives within fictional audiovisual entertainment (short films) from the perspective of the creator, namely the brand. It focuses on the innovation of new advertising formats and how businesses can leverage them to better connect with their target audiences, a practice known in the field as brand films.

This study aims to identify the key narrative and production strategies that foster emotional engagement between brands and audiences in branded entertainment short films from the screenplay to the distribution channels. Drawing on expert interviews and award-winning campaigns from the 2023 Cannes Lions¹, it explores how these creative works successfully convey brand values and offers practical guidelines for effective storytelling, design, and distribution.

The starting point of this study is grounded in recent neuromarketing research demonstrating that audiovisual branded content is preferred due to its emotional connection with the audience, which increases interest and enhances brand perception and recall (Scopen, 2024; Sociograph, 2021). Narrative, particularly fictional storytelling, holds greater emotional potential and facilitates the communication of brand values, evolving from branded content to branded entertainment.

This study focuses on short films because they hold a consolidated position within the branded content industry and receive recognition as a distinct category at major international festivals such as Cannes Lions. Their conclusive and self-contained narrative structure allows researchers to compare creative strategies across different cases more effectively. Brands and agencies increasingly choose this format, as reflected in recent industry reports (Scopen, 2024; Sociograph, 2021), due to its ability to generate emotional impact and audience engagement. The popularity and trajectory of short films in branded entertainment have produced a wide range of examples, making them a relevant and analytically rich format for this research.

According to Van Loggerenberg et al. (2019), branded entertainment is defined as a communicative effort that employs authentic and compelling storytelling to achieve brand resonance. In the emerging digital spaces, branded content must adapt to innovative formats with narratives that foster engagement, align with the zeitgeist of consumer generations (Rahman et al., 2024), and are easily distributable across digital platforms (Jenkins et al., 2013).

The study identifies key characteristics in the creation of brand films through in-depth interviews with experts, adopting a holistic perspective that encompasses both production and narrative aspects. Initially, the research examines advertising techniques within branded content narratives to establish categories that shape flexible creative models applicable to successful branded entertainment projects. Beyond enriching the body of work on audience reception of branded content, the study aims to develop concepts that contribute new theories to the field (Gibbs, 2012). Subsequently, these models are validated by applying them to the winners of the 2023 Cannes Lions Branded Content Awards in the category of films under 5 min. The objective is to identify predictive characteristics that facilitate the development of matrices for designing effective branded content narratives with a high likelihood of success.

This study has the general objective of identifying the most effective narrative and technical patterns that enable the creation of meaningful emotional connections between brands and their audiences, based on expert interviews and an analysis of award-winning campaigns at the 2023 Cannes Lions.

The specific objectives are as follows:

The study of the writing process for a branded entertainment initiative, understood as a communication asset applied to the entertainment field, represents a broad, complex, and interpretative subject. Due to the novelty of this practice and its professional application, the study is conducted through an empirical, qualitative analysis, allowing for the exploration of the nuances of an emerging advertising genre (Cotán, 2016).

The qualitative study (Gibbs, 2012), combined with case examples (Noor, 2008), adopts a research perspective focused on understanding professionals’ perceptions of the entire process of creating a branded entertainment story. It also explores the application of previously identified frameworks to successful brand film cases. The research seeks to address the following questions:

To identify and outline the characteristics of brand films and the production processes they require, incorporating methodologies from cinema and other arts, in-depth interviews were conducted with five international experts in branded content. The selection of interviewees was based on relevance and opportunity, focusing on profiles with significant representation in branded content creation and research (Neira et al., 2024).

Although the sample size was limited, the purposive and theoretically grounded selection of participants ensured conceptual depth over statistical representativeness, in accordance with qualitative research standards. Furthermore, data saturation was achieved, as the final interviews yielded recurring themes rather than new insights.

The participants included:

All participants provided written informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study, in compliance with the ethical principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki.

The selection of participants followed a non-probabilistic, intentional sampling approach with a theoretical focus (Arantzamendi et al., 2012). This sampling ensured a balanced representation: homogeneity in terms of the study’s field, yet heterogeneity in each participant’s expertise within theoretical or practical domains, thereby minimising bias.

The methodology employed structured personal interviews. The questionnaire provided to the experts contained 10 questions focusing on the role of the brand in the creation of an audiovisual branded entertainment story. The interviews were conducted in Spanish, Italian, or English, ensuring clarity and fostering an international framework.

The interviews were recorded on video to capture responses accurately. Each participant received the questionnaire, translated into three languages, 1 week in advance to allow sufficient preparation. The interviews, approximately 30 min each, provided ample time for experts to express their views on each question. The video recordings were later transcribed, translated, and analysed for efficiency and precision.

The responses were processed through inductive content analysis, aiming to compare content, identify patterns, and deduce explanatory arguments applicable to case studies.

The significant information was classified and identified according to codes to organize data segments, identify and group said data according to criteria that relate them (Arantzamendi et al., 2012).

Categories were also identified, “a category is a group of content that shares common aspects,” (Arantzamendi et al., 2012, p. 113).

With the data we extracted from the responses themselves, we proceeded to read them, noting codes and categories for each of the questionnaire responses in the margins of the tables. From this coding, we produced a summary with categories and corresponding codes for each of the participants in the interview. With this procedure, we aim to arrive at an abstraction of the concepts in order to describe the phenomenon of Branded Entertainment writing in depth and generate knowledge about the subject matter.

Finally, we did a content analysis of this qualitative experiment (inductive in nature) because we found that the literature on the subject lacked sufficient theoretical content on the process of writing Branded Entertainment (Lauri and Kyngäs, 2005). See questionnaire and code categorisation in the following database (Rodríguez-Gómez et al., 1999).

The findings from the interviews propose a conceptual framework aintended to be tested against successful case studies. The selected pieces for applying the framework described by the experts were drawn from the 2023 Cannes Lions Branded Content Awards in the category of fiction shorts under 5 min, all considered brand films.

The choice of this festival is justified by several factors. First, its global reach lends the selected cases a marked international character, ensuring broad applicability across diverse contexts. Second, the festival’s judging criteria for brand film campaigns include percentages addressing strategic insights, creativity, execution, and campaign outcomes.

The working universe for this phase consists of four pieces, three originating from commercial brand initiatives and one from a non-profit organisation (Table 1).

This section presents the main findings from the interviews, based on the methodology described previously, to then compare these findings with various award-winning brand short films in the branded entertainment category from the Cannes Lions Awards database.

Associating a brand with values or ideas is not a novel concept. Tsai (2005) highlighted the importance of emotional experience as crucial to brand acceptance and purchase value. In today’s context, where advertising seeks to avoid being intrusive to enhance its impact and retention, it is essential to implement discursive strategies that consider brands as active social agents. The articulation of brand content within entertainment and storytelling (De Miguel et al., 2022), particularly through brand films, is vital. This involves addressing creative and communicative dimensions that extend beyond the traditional television spot. Zomeño and Blay-y-Arráez (2022) emphasise the need to conceptualize new branded content departments, confirming their interdisciplinary nature.

This study contributes to the theoretical framework of branded entertainment by proposing a three-dimensional framework (Production–Content–Audience) in a structured and integrative manner (Figure 2).

This approach reveals how strategic brand decisions (Production) are translated into narrative elements (Content) that ultimately shape audience response (Audience). The model offers a structured approach for analyzing how storytelling techniques operate within brand-driven audiovisual narratives, particularly in the short film format, when the possibilities for narrative impact are more limited in time.

The proposed three-dimensional framework also offers tangible benefits for professional practice. By breaking down the process of branded content creation into three interconnected dimensions, it enables professionals to diagnose, plan, and evaluate their campaigns with greater precision.

Within the production dimension, the three dimension conceptual framework establishes strategic clarity by explicitly identifying production elements such as brand-driven decisions aimed at selecting protagonists with greater intentional alignment. It emphasises the importance of aligning commercial objectives with narrative decisions from the outset of the process—ultimately fostering coherence between brand strategy and storytelling.

Moreover, by unpacking key narrative elements, professionals can craft content that is more relevant and emotionally impactful without deviating from the brand’s core values. Regarding the audience, this approach proposes criteria for assessing the emotional and persuasive impact of the content, allowing these insights to inform and refine future campaigns.

Finally, the triangulated framework aims to create a shared language for today’s multidisciplinary teams, facilitating consistent decision-making and smoother collaboration between creative and commercial interests.

The presence of brand films necessitates that brands collaborate with the audiovisual industry to craft compelling narratives that resonate with audiences. Brands must define a creative strategy to guide the creation of the advertising message (brief), enabling the creative team to develop processes that align with the brand’s needs and objectives (Ortega, 2004; Castelló-Martínez and Del Pino-Romero, 2019).

Including renowned authors in the creative team can carry a promotional nuance. Much like the use of celebrities increases the perceived authenticity of a brand (Kennedy et al., 2021), the participation of acclaimed directors or creatives in production reinforces the perception of an audiovisual production rather than a promotional piece. Recognised actors, directors, writers, or musicians, not traditionally associated with advertising, can lend authenticity to the narrative.

Each piece adopts its unique strategy. In Nike Presents The Footballverse, Call Me. with Timothée Chalamet, and Dirty Laundry, narrative quality is achieved through high-impact figures such as elite footballers, actor Timothée Chalamet, or artist Remie Akl. Interviewed experts confirm the effectiveness of this strategy, fostering audience connection with relevant characters based on their context or interests. These inclusions also facilitate brand engagement, aligning characters with brand values.

Such strategies transcend the formal dimensions of the narrative and progress towards audience engagement, exploring cultural capital as a form of interaction and involvement (Pluntz and Pras, 2020). In this context, the study by Mosquera-Álvarez and Hidalgo-Albuja (2020) examines the effectiveness of humour in brand recall, justifying the light tone of many brand films aimed at capturing younger audiences.

Creative advertising strategy serves as a roadmap to connect with the target audience, while creative proposals are strategic content designed to communicate a brand’s concept to its audience (Marketing Directo, 2024). The award-winning pieces, focusing on relevant characters (e.g., Timothée Chalamet or Remie Akl), significant events (e.g., the FIFA World Cup or Halloween), or social issues (e.g., gender violence, multiverses, digital platforms, and young stars), are essential for making an initial connection with the target audience. Leveraging specific moments, trends, or interests keeps brands relevant and helps overcome initial advertising barriers.

When brands combine messages, objectives, and values of engagement with prosocial corporate practices, they engage in authentic brand activism, creating significant potential for social change and brand value (Vredenburg et al., 2020). Additionally, associating brands with characters leads to an “anthropomorphisation” that strengthens audiences’ emotional engagement (Lim et al., 2022).

In a brand film, the brand must integrate into the story without appearing as product placement. The narratives analysed depict brands as narrative agents within the plot. Nike and Apple visibly feature as objects within the narrative, whereas Abaad Gender Equality and Uber Eats appear only in the credits or marginally. This suggests that for brands without physical products, inclusion is more complex, favouring a disconnection between the narrative and sales while associating the brand with values or causes. An effective strategy to avoid the perception of traditional advertising is to focus on the originality of the story or on social values and issues, as exemplified by Abaad Gender Equality.

A dimension explored in this study that warrants future attention is the organisation of native digital strategies. Disseminating content through owned and earned media channels is a significant advantage of these promotional practices. The high quality and short duration of audiovisual pieces (endorsed by creative agencies) provide avenues for engagement with the potential to reach young audiences. This is crucial as the customer/audience experiences the brand as an audiovisual journey akin to a traditional film narrative.

This study has certain limitations, including a small expert interview sample and a focus on conceptual depth over broad representativeness. As such, findings are not generalizable to all branded content formats, especially long-form genres. The absence of direct audience data also limits insights into reception. Future research could expand the sample, include audience perspectives, and explore other formats like branded series or interactive content.

Despite the increasing practical and scholarly interest, the field of branded entertainment remains an emerging discipline, with its creative and production processes still in early stages. The existing literature often focuses on specific aspects such as audience reception or case studies, but it lacks comprehensive models that capture the phenomenon as a whole. To fill this gap, the main theoretical contribution of this study is the development of an original conceptual framework based on the interaction of three core dimensions: Production, Content, and Audience. This three dimension conceptual framework not only aims to outline the elements of successful campaigns but also seeks to provide an analytical model and a strategic guide for navigating the complexities of creating brand films, thereby contributing new concepts and theories to the field.