Why has storytelling has become the fastest-growing growth engine in a post-advertising world?
If you’ve ever wondered why Hollywood feels increasingly stuck on sequels while sneaker brands, fast food chains, toy companies, and technology platforms are producing genuinely compelling films and series, you’re not imagining things.
You’re witnessing the rise of narrative commerce.
Narrative commerce is not advertising. It is the strategic use of long-form storytelling to build brand value, trust, and cultural relevance over time. And in 2026, it is becoming one of the most powerful forces reshaping who gets to tell our stories.
The line between what we buy and what we watch is dissolving. What’s replacing it is a new operating model, one where brands are no longer renting attention, but owning narrative infrastructure.
1. Narrative Commerce Is Filling a Power Vacuum Left by Hollywood
This shift isn’t happening because brands suddenly want to make movies. It’s happening because traditional studios are struggling to take risk.
According to Ampere Analysis, global investment in scripted film and television fell by more than 20 percent between 2022 and 2024, driven by consolidation, restructuring, and cost reduction across major studios. As risk appetite narrows, greenlights slow and originality suffers.
Brands, meanwhile, are sitting on capital, data, and distribution. They are stepping into this vacuum not as advertisers, but as story owners.
Luxury group LVMH exemplifies this shift. With the launch of 22 Montaigne Entertainment, LVMH established a central studio to co-develop, co-produce, and co-finance film and television projects across its portfolio of more than 75 brands. This is not product placement. It’s intellectual property strategy.
McKinsey research shows that emotionally connected customers deliver 20–30 percent higher lifetime value. For luxury brands in particular, narrative is not a marketing layer. It is the product.
2. Toys Proved That Narrative Commerce Outperforms Media Spend
The toy industry validated narrative commerce in financial terms.
Barbie generated $1.44bn in global box office revenue and reignited Mattel’s entire IP portfolio. In response, Mattel formed Mattel Studios, with a development slate reportedly exceeding 300 projects.
What made this work wasn’t scale alone, but philosophy.
By partnering with Hollywood, Mattel’s leadership adopted a “story first, brand second” approach, attracting elite creative talent and reframing Mattel from a manufacturer into an entertainment company. WARC data shows that branded entertainment delivers 2× the attention time of traditional digital advertising.
Narrative commerce doesn’t interrupt culture. It becomes part of it.
3. Big Tech Is Using Narrative to Normalize the Future
When technology companies fund film and television, they are not chasing subscriptions. They are shaping perception.
Google’s 100 Zeros initiative funds premium film and TV projects designed for distribution via third-party streamers. The objective is cultural influence, not platform control.
This matters because trust in technology is fragile. The Edelman Trust Barometer consistently reports that fewer than 50 percent of consumers trust technology companies to “do what’s right.”
Narrative commerce is how that trust gap is closed. By embedding complex technologies like AI into human stories, companies normalize adoption long before regulation or product education catches up.
Storytelling becomes the soft power layer of innovation.
4. Narrative Commerce Requires Systems, Not Campaigns
This shift extends far beyond film and television.
Holding companies like Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP are rebuilding themselves as intelligent content engines. Omnicom reports productivity gains of up to 45 percent through automation in creative production, while WPP’s partnership with NVIDIA enables persistent 3D worlds for global brands.
At the extreme end of the spectrum, Red Bull has long been at the forefront of demonstrating what full narrative ownership looks like. By owning both event IP and global media rights, Red Bull operates as a vertically integrated media company that happens to sell beverages.
The lesson is clear:
Narrative commerce is an operating model, not a content format.
5. Brands Are Becoming Studios by Necessity, Not Ambition
Always-on content demand has exploded. Cisco forecasts that video will account for over 80 percent of global internet traffic, with brands responsible for a growing share of that output.
Outsourcing everything to agencies no longer works:
- It fragments IP ownership
- It slows iteration
- It separates strategy from execution
By internalizing production capability, brands immediately shift power. Assets live on brand-owned infrastructure, not agency servers. Data, workflows, and insight stay in-house.
Agencies don’t disappear, but their role changes. Value moves upstream, toward strategy, orchestration, and creative direction, while brands retain ownership of narrative assets.
Narrative commerce rebalances the ecosystem.
From Campaigns to Continuous Storytelling
The organizations winning today don’t think in campaigns. They think in systems of creation.
They measure creative velocity.
They remove friction across workflows.
They design for iteration, not perfection.
Deloitte research shows that always-on content strategies outperform campaign-only approaches by 25 percent or more in engagement. Narrative compounds. Advertising resets.
The Question Every Brand Must Answer
The boundary between brand and studio is now largely academic.
The most valuable companies in 2026 will not be those that buy the most attention, but those that own the means of storytelling.
Narrative commerce isn’t a trend. It’s a structural shift.
And the real question facing every brand today is not whether they will become a media company, but whether they can learn to operate like one before the gap becomes too wide to close.