When You Entertain, You Earn the Right

When You Entertain People, You Earn the Right to Sell to Them

At Cannes Lions 2026, one idea kept coming up, between the panels, the rosé, and the seemingly endless sweating.

The skill of marketing isn't fighting for attention anymore, but earning it.

Jordan Peters, who leads Marketing Partnerships for EMEA at Netflix, put it simply while speaking on our panel inside of ADWEEK house:

"When you entertain people, you earn the right to sell to them."

Understandably, It's a deceptively simple statement, but it captures what we believe to be one of the biggest shifts happening in modern marketing.

For years, brands have optimized for impressions, clicks, and sales. Yet consumers haven't suddenly fallen back in love with advertising; they've just gotten exceptionally good at pretending it isn't there. What they continue to make time for are stories, characters, fandoms, and the cultural moments that truly matter to them.

That's why entertainment has become so much more than just another media channel, as some tend to believe. More and more everyday it’s just become the place where attention naturally lives.

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Storytelling Comes Before Selling

One of the strongest themes from the discussion inside the La Magetique hotel, where everyone agreed was more interesting than stepping outside and instantly melting, was that successful entertainment partnerships aren't about squeezing a logo into a show or getting your entire budget together to license a popular character.

It’s about contributing to something people already care about.

Jordan described the most successful collaborations as those that don't simply borrow from a fandom; they take time to build something fans genuinely will love. Instead of creating another promotional asset, brands should take their time to think about building ecosystems that can grow alongside a community over time.

That's a fundamentally different mindset than traditional campaign thinking.

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Entertainment Isn't Just Brand Building

Another misconception that continues to hold marketers back is the belief that entertainment partnerships are "brand plays" while performance marketing drives sales.

Our panel, although intermittently, challenged that assumption directly.

When entertainment partnerships are authentic and strategically aligned with fandom, they don't just improve awareness, they can influence purchase intent, strengthen your brand's preference, and create true and measurable business outcomes.

TLDR, the strongest campaigns aren't choosing between brand and performance, they're just doing both.

What This Means for Marketers

The takeaway isn't that every brand needs a blockbuster partnership.

It's that every brand should ask a different question.

Instead of:

"How do we advertise in entertainment?"

Ask:

"How do we add something valuable to the stories people already love?"

When brands become part of entertainment in a way that feels authentic, they stop competing for attention.

They become part of the reason people are paying attention in the first place, which can be leveraged far beyond the screen, a cultural moment that could last in perpetuity if combined with the right entertainment strategy.

At EightPM, that's the opportunity we see every day: helping brands move beyond placement and into participation, creating integrations that feel natural, culturally relevant, and genuinely additive to the stories audiences choose to spend time with.

As Jordan Peters reminded everyone at Cannes:

"When you entertain people, you earn the right to sell to them."
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In an attention economy, there really may not be a more important marketing principle than just that.

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