Brands as Story Engines: Five Strategic Takeaways from BrandStorytelling at MIPCOM 2025

Jordan P. Kelley, Content Director, BrandStorytelling

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Last week in Cannes, the BrandStorytelling Summit at MIPCOM 2025 (October 13th & 14th) convened an expert group of brands, filmmakers, agencies, studios and distributors to lay out the blueprint for how brand-funded entertainment is entering its most operational phase. Participants included:

• Kim Miller  (Global CMO, Toys“R”Us & President, Toys“R”Us Studios), who opened the summit with her keynote on how a legacy retail brand is becoming a full-fledged content IP engine.

• Doug Scott (Founder, UNXOWN), who shared a wide-angle address positioning brand-funded entertainment as a strategic growth engine.

• Representatives from agencies such as McCann Worldgroup (Brendan Gaul), Dentsu (Cathy Boxall), and UTA (Sam Glynne) spoke on the importance of the moment in brand storytelling and the agency-driven deal models for brand-content.

• Studio/distributors like Banijay Entertainment (Carlotta Rossi Spencer) and Fremantle (Roberta Zamboni) brought insight into how content funded by brands is being shaped, supported and sold globally.

• Thought-leaders such as K7 Media (Clare Thompson) presented market research on how the creator economy and branded entertainment are intersecting.

• Brand representatives from Indeed (Aidan McLaughlin) and Ancestry (Brad Argent) shared unique insights from the brand perspective on everything from internal ideation to production to measurement.

  
  

With this line-up, plus case studies like “Tame The Kraken” from U.S. companies Storybones Media & Four Branches Bourbon, “Una Isla de Ti” from IPG Mediabrands Spain, and work from Mamelodi Sundowns and Londolozi Game Reserve produced by South African production company Fell & Co., the summit painted a clear picture: brand-funded entertainment is no longer experimental - it is becoming structural and has gone fully global. Here are five key take-aways from this year’s summit:

1. The frameworks for brand-funded entertainment already exist… they don’t need invention.

Kim Miller’s day one keynote was a strong signal as it relates to where brands are placing their creative energy.  In her conversation with The Hollywood Reporter’s Jeanie Pyun, Miller discussed brand IP, its studio practice, global expansion, and creative partnerships with major movie studios (see Miller’s headline in Variety that broke at the conference). Those insights reflected a broader summit theme. As Doug Scott emphasized in his “Great Content Reckoning” address, the models and frameworks for brand-financed productions are already in place. “Tame the Kraken” illustrated how brand, creative partner and production can co-design a film-story with journalistic intent, baked-in values, and distribution ambitions. The takeaway? Financing, co-production, rights, and distribution are all well past theoretical. The implication for filmmakers and brand studios is clear and evidenced by the many examples showcased and discussed in Cannes: brands and their storytelling partners don’t have to invent the wheel. Those who apply the existing model, adapt to IP and budget, and position the brand as commissioner/co-producer rather than just a sponsor are seeing results.

2. The democratization of content means brands can win by letting quality meet audience-first logic.

Across sessions such as “The State of the Industry” with Brendan Gaul, Cathy Boxall, and Janett Haas and “Brand-Funded Entertainment: What’s the Deal?” with Brian Newman, Mark Book, Sam Glynne, and Isidoor Roebers, the consensus was that brands are no longer simply adjuncts to creative partners. In a world inundated with content, agencies like McCann and Dentsu made clear they are packaging brand-stories as series or features and placing them into global windows. These sessions made it clear that for creatives and agencies, the primary frame is the audience, not the brand flag. The dimension of quality, the narrative form (feature, episodic, doc), and how the story meets the audience come first. Brands can underwrite content in much the same way a producer would. Kim Miller referenced the shift from “brand exposure” to “story engagement” and “IP lifecycle”. For practitioners, this means if the program is well-crafted and audience-rich, a brand partner can make it work.

3. International scale is no longer optional: it’s happening now.

Given that this was the first international edition of the summit at MIPCOM, the global dimension was explicit. Banijay’s Carlotta Rossi Spencer and Fremantle’s Roberta Zamboni emphasized distribution windows across territories. K7 Media’s Clare Thompson flagged global creator-economy models, mediums, and formats. IPG Mediabrands Spain in conversation with BCMA founder Andrew Canter as well as Javier Martinez from YouFirst Originals independently illustrated how a brand-led film can be built for cross-border impact, winning audience attention and awards along the way. To borrow a term from Doug Scott, the resounding message for agents, financiers and creators was this: think “glocal” - global to local - from day one. Rights, format potential, international partners and multi-market appeal must be baked into the brief. Brands inclined to invest must demand that ambition in the content blueprint.

4. Measurement of return must be re-thought and built in before production starts.

The summit repeatedly flagged the importance of measurement. However, conversations around measurement differed from those at past BrandStorytelling gatherings.  Rather than discuss the difficulty in pinning down the nebulous nature of measurement as it relates to brand storytelling returns, participants across panels indicated a sense of optimism around getting to the heart of the matter - an optimism that begins with dismantling previous notions of what measurement should look like.  A panel titled “Measuring ROI: What’s in it for the Brand?” featuring Blink49’s Adam Puchalsky, BBC Studios’ Farra Kober, Indeed’s Aidan McLaughlin, and filmmaker/brand builder Megan Wells, made clear that success definitions have to have a direct correlation with a brand’s goal and a story’s purpose as opposed to leaning on vanity metrics like impressions. UTA’s Sam Glynne urged the audience to define with partners “what return means” before cameras roll. For creators and financiers this means contracts must lay out KPIs, analytics rights and distribution logic from the outset. Without alignment, partners risk a mismatch between brand expectations and creative output.

5. Bridging brand-language and entertainment-language is the key to unlocking brand storytelling.

Experience in this space has shown that brands often like to speak in ROI & reach, while creators tend to speak in character & narrative. Agencies and studios at this year’s conference indicated that the most successful projects are those in which partners fluently switch between and therefore bridge these languages. This was beautifully exemplified by Ancestry, whose panel with creator Robbie Lyle and filmmaker Iain Thompson demonstrated the deftness with which brand, creator, and filmmaker can come together, each leveraging their own expertise and speciality, to deliver a result that not only meets the brand’s mandate, but is also creatively rich and deeply appealing to audiences. Virtually every other case study explored did the same in demonstrating how brand/entertainment fluency unlocked a positive content result. When filmmakers, studios, and agencies can translate brand objectives into entertainment mechanics, and vice versa, the financing pathways open. Brands that accept the language of television and streaming (rights, windows, talent, format) gain access to entertainment ecosystems, not just digital spots.

The BrandStorytelling Summit at MIPCOM laid bare that the branded-content business has matured. The frameworks exist and the mechanics are clear. The democratization of content and the global creator economy mean you can launch brand-story IP with audience-first logic and international ambition. What remains harder but crucial is the discipline to operationalize it.  Setting success metrics early, adopting entertainment-industry talk, partnering across disciplines, and designing the story to live beyond the 30-second ad are essential elements of successful brand-funded entertainment. Those that attended the summit within MIPCOM walked away with a better understanding that the next brand story they’re involved in, whether it's their first or simply the next of many, must treat the brand as investor and commissioner, the creative team as storytellers, and the global market as the client.

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About Jordan P. Kelley

Jordan P. Kelley is a branded content trend watcher, thought leader, speaker, and moderator serving as BrandStorytelling's Content Director and curating the festival portion of BrandStorytelling: a Sanctioned Event of Sundance Film Festival. A Forbes contributor, Kelley co-produces The BrandStorytelling Podcast 'Content That Moves' as well as various video series for the BrandStorytelling YouTube Channel.