I’m skipping Cannes Lions this year but watching closely from LA instead, which gives you a certain clarity: branded entertainment and the creator economy aren’t fringe conversations anymore. They’re center stage at the Palais as they are for brands. That shift happened fast. -Jeff

A weekly digest of what's happening in branded entertainment, branded content, and the distribution infrastructure that makes it work. From Jeff Hallstead at Momentive Ventures.

Adidas won two Grand Prix at Cannes Lions this week: Entertainment Lions and Entertainment Lions for Music. Both went to "Original Forever," created by Johannes Leonardo in New York. The campaign launched alongside the Oasis reunion tour. A three-minute film featuring Liam and Noel Gallagher's first on-screen appearance together in 16 years. 300+ fans cast from across the UK. A music video set to "Live Forever" that opened the show at 41 stadiums. At peak, Adidas was moving one unit of merch per second.

The jury president's framing is worth keeping: "At a time when so many brands are trying to manufacture relevance, this was a reminder that the most powerful thing a brand can do is show up in the right moment, for the right community, with something worth caring about."

Adidas didn't create the cultural moment (because brands can’t create cultural moments). The Gallaghers did. Adidas built the infrastructure to live inside it: merch, film, stadium presence, fan casting. The brand earned proximity to something people already cared about and didn't get in the way. That's a different brief than "how do we make content people watch." It starts with "What are our people already showing up for?"

The lesson isn't to find the next Oasis. It's to audit your brand's actual cultural relationships. The communities, artists, athletes, and moments where your presence is genuinely welcome. Ask whether your content strategy activates those relationships or just broadcasts to them.

The so-what: If your branded entertainment program starts with the content format and works backward to the audience, you're solving the wrong problem. Start with the community and the moment they already care about. The content comes after.

Sources: Adweek | Cannes Lions | LBBOnline

Netflix's brand partnership results are showing up in the numbers. At this year's Upfront, Netflix shared real data: the Dove/Bridgerton "Let Them Talk" campaign drove more than 1 billion impressions across seven markets and a 60% increase in new Dove shoppers. Airbnb's integration with "Nobody Wants This" delivered ROAS more than double the industry benchmark and drove actual bookings. Lower-funnel results from upper-funnel placements. Netflix isn't asking brands to trust the theory anymore. It's showing receipts. The real question for brand managers: can your creative earn that kind of adjacency, or are you just buying it? (About Netflix | Unilever)

Hearst launched Aura IQ at Cannes, pitching first-party data as a publisher's competitive moat. Built on its existing Aura platform (30 audience personas drawn from editorial signals across 25+ titles), the new layer adds agentic AI that handles RFP responses, audience builds, and campaign analysis in minutes. Early testing showed a 2x lift in clickthrough rate. The Cannes timing is deliberate. Hearst wants to be the publisher-side answer to the walled gardens at exactly the moment brands are shopping for alternatives. Whether it can hold that position as cookie deprecation plays out is the real question. (Adweek | eMarketer)

Amazon Prime Video's Dynamic TV Creative is live, and Mercedes-Benz is the first case study. The format pulls from Amazon shopping data, viewing history, geography, and product availability to serve different creatives to different viewers in real time. Mercedes-Benz activated it as the presenting sponsor of NBA Saturday games on Prime Video. Your ad becomes a different piece of creative depending on who's watching. No traditional broadcast sponsor has had that. Brands without a first-party data strategy are going to fall further behind on formats like this. (Amazon Ads | Marketing Dive)

Creator content was on every major Upfront stage this year, not just YouTube's. Netflix announced originals from Mark Rober, Salish and Jordan Matter, and Alan Chikin Chow. Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox, and Amazon Prime Video all featured creator talent in their presentations. U.S. advertisers’ spend on creator content is projected at $44 billion this year, up from $37 billion in 2025. Creators aren't an influencer marketing line item anymore. They're a programming category with network-scale distribution. The brands building direct creator relationships now will have options that late movers will have to buy at a premium. (CNBC | The Wrap)

Cannes Lions is a useful annual audit. Not of creative quality. Of ambition. The campaigns that win the Entertainment Grand Prix aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones where a brand made a real creative bet on a cultural relationship it already owned. "Original Forever" worked because Adidas had a decades-long connection to Britpop and the discipline to serve that community instead of exploiting it. Most brand content programs aren't built to make that kind of bet. Briefs are too short-term. Approvals are too risk-averse. Measurement is too focused on impressions. The question isn't "how do we win at Cannes?" It's "what cultural relationships does our brand actually own, and are we building anything inside them?"

If you're a brand manager building a content strategy and want a second opinion, I'm available for a 30-minute call. Book here.

Jeff Hallstead is a brand strategy consultant and fractional Chief Content Officer who helps brand teams build branded entertainment strategies, executive-produce original content, and develop the distribution infrastructure that turns content into a competitive asset. Based in Los Angeles.

Advisory services at jeffhallstead.com