Hollywood’s leading marketing executives praised the shifting tides around product placement and advertising in film and television, as the creative community embraces brand collaborations to offset industrywide cost-cutting.
TheWrap gathered leaders from NBCUniversal, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery, Diageo, UTA, Google TV and more for its inaugural Brand Integration Power Players Breakfast Tuesday at the UTA offices in Beverly Hills, asking them how brand integration has evolved in a changing entertainment sector.
Ahead of the event, TheWrap unveiled its first Brand Integration Power Players list, featuring 25 trailblazers who changed the face of marketing in Hollywood.
UTA VP and product placement head Jillian Raskin said at the event, sponsored by Google TV and in partnership with UTA, that the landscape looked completely different for advertising within scripted content a decade ago. At the time, the executive recalled having to champion integration concepts to skeptical clients.
“It’s completely shifted, and producers are proactively reaching out to brands and agencies like us and really seeing the value in it and how it can help offset production costs,” Raskin said during The Business of Brand Integration panel, moderated by TheWrap senior reporter Kayla Cobb.
“Production budgets have gotten slashed a bit in film and TV, and they’re seeing this as a way to replace those costs,” Raskin added. “There is just more of a general openness to it if it’s done authentically and organically.”
Jeffrey Godsick, Sony Pictures’ EVP of Global Partnerships & Brand Strategy, echoed this sentiment, noting that if ad integration inside of a film does not feel organic the audience will “call you on it.” His primary advice would be to meet early with directors and writers to seamlessly weave the brand’s needs into a project’s story.
Most recently, Godsick led the brand integration for Sony’s animated hit film “Goat.” The movie follows Will, a goat who aspires to become the greatest of all time at a basketball-like sport known as roarball. The sports-centric animated film was prime for brand partnerships, because fans are already accustomed to seeing them at real-life sporting events. This led to Sony’s partnership with Under Armour to create a custom sneaker for the animated film.
“We wanted to do something where we could create a product inside the movie that was created by people who are experts in their field, so instead of our animators creating a shoe, we went to Under Armour and created with their designers working together to create a new version of a Steph Curry shoe,” he said.
The executives noted though that in-film partnerships are just the tip of the iceberg in the digital age. Lindsay Wallner, director of branded entertainment at Diageo, spotlighted the company’s 2025 partnership with Universal Pictures for “M3GAN 2.0.”
The beverage product company matched Captain Morgan with the horror film, creating Captain M3GAN. The company sold a limited-edition, glow-in-the-dark Captain M3GAN label on Captain Morgan Original Spiced Rum timed to the film’s release.
“‘This is the part where you rum’ sort of writes itself, and Universal was an amazing strategic partner,” Wallner said of the play on words of the character’s signature line from the first film. “For us, it’s a mix of the right IP and the right platform.”
Wallner added that YouTube has become a “ripe place” for brand integrations. Godsick’s team for “Goat” also partnered with DoorDash for a special spot that extended beyond the scripted content on screen. The animation team collaborated with the online delivery platform to create a scripted ad spot that featured the film’s stars taking a quest to find a missing shoe. When Jett (Gabrielle Union) misplaces one of her game day shoes, she orders a new pair just in time for the game.
“It really felt like it could have been a scene [in the movie]. It was incredibly authentic in that sense, but the animation style matched the movie perfectly,” Godsick added. “It was its own little beginning, middle and end piece of content. We actually made a longer version and ultimately put it online as well, in addition to the 30-second spots that they ran, but people really liked it. We saw a lot more shareability because it was treated as content, as opposed to just a TV spot.”
As for what’s on the horizon for brand integrations, Google TV’s global head of go-to-market & content programming, Lisa Siskind Bilgrei, said that AI will start to play a role in how audiences consume advertisements on-screen just as it does in digital content.
“This is where you’re going to see AI play a big role too, in making sure that you’re showing the right ads to the right people at the right time,” she said. “We already do that on the content side, where, if we were all to turn on our home screens, everyone’s would be different, because it gets to know what kind of content you like. That’s where I see advertising going as well, especially as we’re trying to reach younger users — in the sense of making sure that you’re showing them ads and content that speak to them.”
Jennifer Chalhub, the vice president of production resources for Warner Bros. Discovery, said one opportunity brands often overlook when trying to reach younger audiences is horror films. She worked on an in-film ad integration for “Weapons” and candidly wished those partners would have done more with their integrations.
“Not every placement in a horror film is scary,” she said. “There is a lot of fun, and I think brands need to look into it more. Not every brand is going to work in a horror film, but there are a lot of brands that are missing out.”
“[‘Weapons’] was phenomenal, not only did it do well in theaters, it was actually a really good horror film … I wish those partners would have done more with those placements,” she said. “It was a missed opportunity — definitely think horror is something that all brands should consider.”
Cobb also moderated a conversation with NBCUniversal Chief Marketing Officer for TV and Streaming Jenny Storms, in her first interview since the company’s “Legendary February” sports bonanza. The marketing push saw the platform host the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, Super Bowl LX and NBA All-Star Weekend.
In the sports mega-month, NBCU reached 225 million Americans. Super Bowl LX was the most-watched in the company’s history; the Milan Cortina Olympics was the biggest Winter Olympics to date; and the NBA All-Star Weekend was the most-watched since 2011.
For Storms and the NBCU team, the key was making entertainment consumers out of sports fans. The CMO said that during Legendary February over 50% of consumption was entertainment content across the company’s platforms.
“It was about us creating really curated journeys that made sense for sports consumers and sportainment consumers,” she said. “This time we really treated sports like a front door versus an endpoint.”
The wealth of sports content led viewers to watch scripted series like “Ponies,” which saw an over 175% increase in February; “The ‘Burbs,” which racked up over a billion minutes viewed; and “Reggie Dinkins,” which garnered 13 million views on its pilot alone.
“We’re talking about rising all boats when people are on the platform for those sporting events, not necessarily making it an end game and then pushing people,” she added.
