Tomorrow's Marketing Departments Will Look More Like Film Studios
Why the future of marketing is world-building.
In the future, Product companies won't have marketing departments anymore. It'll look more like an in-house film studio.
This won't be a luxury or an experiment - it will be as fundamental as having an engineering team. The reason has to do with the evolution of how ideas propagate in an age of abundance.
Every now and then I get exposed to enough novel signals that they coalesce, opening a glimpse into the future. What I'm seeing is a paradox that's emerging: As AI makes content creation easier, the bar for meaningful engagement gets higher, not lower. But it's not just about noise vs. signal - it's about how the nature of trust and attention is fundamentally shifting.
In a world where anyone can generate content, the differentiator isn't the content itself - it's the depth of conviction and the richness of the world-building around it. We're witnessing a shift from marketing as persuasion to marketing as world-building.
Everything is accelerating down this spectrum. The shift from scarcity to abundance in content creation is driving a new scarcity: authentic conviction and deep narrative coherence. You see this everywhere: As communication gets cheaper (everyone has ChatGPT), the bar has raised for expressing ideas. High-fidelity outputs signal investment in the vision.
Today's companies still operate as if marketing were merely about message amplification. They hire social media managers when they need storytellers. They seek growth hackers when they need world-builders. They chase virality when they should be cultivating conviction.
The studio model isn't optional – it's a necessity. It's the new core competency: the ability to constantly scan for signals, craft compelling theses, create rich lore, and consistently reinforce these narratives across every medium.
We're moving from an era of product-led growth to narrative-led growth, where the story isn't just marketing wrapped around a product - the story is the product, and physical products are manifestations of that story.
So what should you do?
First, recognize that every product decision is a narrative decision. Every feature ships not just functionality but meaning. Every design choice tells not just how to use something, but why it matters.
Second, invest in narrative infrastructure:
From content → to storytelling,
From messaging → to lore,
From brand guidelines → to belief systems,
From marketing departments → to film studios.
Remember: Communities don't form around products; they form around beliefs. Markets don't follow features; they follow stories.
In boardrooms across the world, executives still place too much emphasis on marketing funnels and campaign metrics. They still think in terms of quarterly campaigns and content calendars. But they're playing a game that's soon to be over.
In the next five years, every successful company will replace their marketing department with something that looks more like a film studio. Not because it's trendy, but because it's necessary for survival. The companies that understand this shift will thrive.
The future belongs to the storytellers. Not the kind that write taglines, but the kind that write reality.