At this year’s Cannes Lions, our CEO Britt Johnson took the stage alongside Laura Dyer, SVP of Global Marketing at SharkNinja, and Magno Herran, VP of Global Brand and Partnership Marketing at Netflix, for “Brands’ Next Stage: The Playbook for Entertainment Partnerships.” Moderated by Ankler Media’s Natalie Jarvey, the session was a candid, example-rich look at how the relationship between Hollywood and brands has fundamentally changed, and why this might be the most exciting moment the industry has ever seen for getting it right.
The headline takeaway came early. After nearly three decades of building brand integrations and partnerships, the consensus on stage was that we are in one of the best places this business has ever been. Writers, producers, and studios are actively looking for the right fit for brands rather than treating them as a necessary intrusion. At the same time, audiences are leaning back in. Gen Z and viewers well beyond it are tuning back into television, heading to theaters, and streaming constantly. That combination of creative openness and audience attention is rare, and it has changed what is possible.
But it has also raised the bar. Today’s consumer can smell anything inauthentic from a mile away, and the biggest mistake a brand can make is forcing a message into a story where it does not belong. As the panel framed it, the question is no longer “How do we get our brand into a Netflix project?” The real question is “Where does our brand actually belong?” That distinction is the whole game. This space is close to sacred, and protecting the audience’s trust matters more than squeezing in another logo.
Laura described what that shift means from inside a brand. For two years running, the conversation at Cannes has circled the same idea: you have to be in culture, in the zeitgeist. It is not really marketing anymore. For SharkNinja, being in culture means the audience should never feel advertised to. They should want the products because they are entertained, because they saw someone in a series or a film using something in a way that felt real, and thought, “That’s cool, I want that.” Every consumer, not just Gen Z, now knows the difference between getting served an ad and discovering something worth having.
She brought it to life with a story about a whiskey. Watching a series set on the Dutton Ranch, she and her husband saw a bottle of Oban 18 and immediately wanted it, not because anyone sold it to them, but because for a moment they wanted to live in that world and be those characters. They are not, of course, but the feeling was real enough to send her looking it up and buying it. That is exactly the feeling SharkNinja wants to create when someone sees a CryoGlow mask, a frozen drink from a SLUSHi, or a scoop of homemade CREAMi ice cream on screen. Want, not awareness.
From Netflix’s side, Magno explained how much had to change internally to make that possible. For years, the platform was firmly against integrations because they felt disruptive to the viewing experience, and protecting creators’ freedom was paramount. What flipped the position was a different kind of conversation with CMOs and brands who said they did not want to disrupt the story either. They wanted to be authentic to the show. Netflix could then surrender control to the brand partner on which scene works best, within reason, and once the product lives naturally in the show, the team can build a campaign that takes it to fans. The philosophy is simple to say and hard to execute: integrations should be seamless and authentic, and the campaigns that follow should be as disruptive and shareable as possible, meeting fans where they want to be met.
The model that makes this work is built on patience rather than pressure, and Britt has been central to it. Nobody pays a big check upfront. The pitch to a brand is straightforward: here is a great show, here is a chance to integrate organically, send the product, it is risk-free, and maybe it makes the cut and maybe it does not. The rule that keeps it honest is that nobody wants it to make the cut if it does not feel real. So the brand sends product, waits for the call, and if a scene lands, they blow it up at the time of release. There is no upfront demand to appear in five scenes and shove the message down the audience’s throat.
On the creator side, the response runs a full spectrum. Some directors and showrunners want nothing to do with brands, and Netflix stays patient with them. Others lean in and love to create, like Darren Star and Mindy Kaling, who have figured out how to write brands into a show in a way that stays true to the characters and the scene. Sometimes the brand integration even helps the storytelling. When the Duffer brothers wanted to recreate the 1980s, there was no better way to paint that picture than to show what a Burger King or a Coca-Cola actually looked like back then. More and more, the conversation feels natural to the storytelling process rather than bolted on.
A standout proof point came from SharkNinja itself. The brand sent its CryoGlow LED masks to the writers’ room and the cast of Nobody Wants This with no pressure attached, just an invitation to try them out, play around with them, and keep them around. The product made its way to the talent, the actress Justine Lupe posted it on her own Instagram, and it found its way into the show. From there, the brand could reach out to maintain a relationship and gift more product, with no payment and no obligation. Sometimes those moments grow into paid, long-term relationships, but the priority is always that it feels organic and real first.
So how does Netflix define a successful partnership today? Integrations matter, but the bigger measure is the fan. Netflix thinks of its members as fans, and every decision should add value for them. When a viewer loves something in a show and then sees it out in the world because the campaign was smart, the partnership stops being merely commercial and becomes something the fan genuinely felt good about. That is why Netflix looks for brands that want to co-create, push a little, and experiment. Internally, the team describes a partnership as a hall pass: most of the year a brand is locked into its media plan and strategy, but a partnership gives it permission to step out of that lane for a while.
Running Point offered two versions of that. The show’s main character drives a Lexus, which fits her perfectly, and the campaign built around it shows her crew frantically prepping for a meeting while belting Evanescence, which takes the integration somewhere far more entertaining. The same show delivered a more unexpected win with State Farm. For the first time, Netflix placed not a product but a person, the character Jake, into the show. The cameo itself is short and subtle, but pairing the steady presence of an insurance brand with a chaotic character who is a liability at every turn made perfect sense. What started as a genuine conversation with the CMO at the upfronts grew into a full campaign with activations around it.
The most talked-about example was SharkNinja’s logo riding alongside Brad Pitt in Apple’s F1. The deal predated Laura’s arrival at the company, and it became a real inflection point for the business. It was the first time the Shark and Ninja halves of the brand had ever appeared together as SharkNinja, and suddenly people understood who the company was. The tagline, “performance never rests,” matched a sport built entirely on performance, and the placement worked precisely because audiences already expect to see brands all over the cars. It was, by Laura’s own honest admission, the epitome of a logo slap, the very thing CMOs claim to hate, but it belonged in that world so it landed. The lesson learned was that a moment like that cannot be treated as a pure media play. Next time, the back end needs to be buttoned up with influencers, social, and affiliates so the brand is not playing catchup.
Underneath all of it runs a willingness to be bold. Laura credits her Netflix DNA for a simple belief: brands have to create conversation and cannot be frightened to do so. The content has to be interesting, shareable, and talkable, the kind of thing that makes people say “Did you see this?” The last thing any brand wants to be is too safe and boring, because then no one cares. At the same time, Britt’s longer view is a reminder that a brand can only go where it truly belongs. Years ago the calls were about landing the Manolo Blahnik placement during the Sex and the City era, and the honest answer was that you cannot always manufacture a moment like that, though you can influence and try.
Deciding when to take a big swing comes down to a mix of data and gut. SharkNinja has built internal AI tools that can take a celebrity’s name and score their fit to the brand out of a hundred, weighing risk against potential reward before producing a recommendation. But the data only goes so far. At the end of the day it takes a gut call to go for it, often backed by a relationship at the studio and the confidence that any wrinkles will get sorted on the back end. The contrast with the old way is stark. It used to be give Dunkin’ Donuts to the set and hope for the best. Now teams can calculate value in advance, plan spend, and build enough runway for a real campaign, the kind that creates a Barbie-summer moment where everyone wants to share it with their friends and followers.
The final frontier is activation beyond the screen. Netflix is now building live events and physical experiences, and brands can show up there too. For a brand that lives in the cloud and on TV, a destination like Netflix House in Philadelphia and Dallas lets fans actually feel and touch the product. Live moments matter as well, not as traditional sports rights but as events: Christmas and Thanksgiving football, a halftime Beyonce concert, the moments that feel like culture itself. Each one is another canvas, and for brands whose lifeblood is content made with creators, influencers, and affiliates, the chance to let people create content with brands in the real world is enormous. That is where a single integration stops being a placement and becomes a movement.
