France recently unveiled their World Cup squad through an 87-second film styled like a 90s sitcom, and it captured exactly where modern marketing is heading.

Set in the fictional town of ‘Clear Fountain’ - a playful nod to Clairefontaine, the French national team’s training centre - the film blends retro visuals, deadpan comedy and character-led storytelling to create a fully realised football universe. The players become recurring characters, turning a simple squad announcement into something far more culturally relevant and entertaining.

As great as the standalone film is, the campaign has the potential to become much more than a one-off. It could evolve into episodic storytelling that rolls out throughout the tournament, featuring recurring characters, running jokes, narrative arcs among players, and a football universe that audiences return to during the World Cup.

In 2026, modern marketing isn’t a campaign with an end date. Instead, marketing has become a series of entertainment systems designed to build loyal, engaged audiences over time.

Serialisation for retention, not interruption 

In the early days of radio and television advertising, manufacturers of soap and washing detergent noticed that their target audience, namely homemakers, were tuning in to the recurring domestic dramas that aired on all the big networks. It was due to the commercial sponsorship of these serial dramas that they came to be known generally as ‘soap operas’. 

Today, the relationship is not simply that brands are sponsoring more dramas (or micro-dramas, more of which later). Instead, marketers are now borrowing the narrative mechanics of soap operas, such as cliffhangers, recurring characters, emotional arcs and serialisation, because those formats are proving exceptionally effective at retaining attention.

For decades, advertising was built around the idea of ‘interruption,’ for example, a 30-second spot inserted into someone else's content. However, in the modern world of skips, scrolls and ad-free subscriptions, that model is less effective than before. Contemporary marketers are coming to realise that, compared with a one-off attention-grabbing campaign, episodic storytelling offers several advantages.

In the first place, episodic campaigns give audiences a reason to come back repeatedly. Brands are discovering that audiences are more likely to follow a continuing narrative than engage with isolated pieces of content. 

In a world where brands now compete not just with rival advertisers but with Netflix, TikTok and YouTube for attention, serialised storytelling allows brands to create entertainment properties rather than advertising messages. Likewise, soap operas have always relied on emotional attachment, recurring characters and unresolved tension. Those same mechanisms encourage audiences to spend more time with branded content. 

Crucially for modern marketers, serial content creates multiple touchpoints and generates more first-party data for brands to analyse. Brands can track which episodes drive engagement, which characters and storylines resonate, and so on, producing far richer audience intelligence than a single campaign burst.

A great example of a brand doing this well is Compare The Market. I’m sure you’ll be familiar with the meerkat that has been the face of their advertising for years. In each ad, a story plays out: it’s humorous, entertaining, and memorable. It’s not about price comparison; it’s about a character that the audience grows to love. 

The micro-drama phenomenon

While brands like Compare The Market have successfully pioneered long-running character arcs in traditional ad spots, micro-dramas are compressing these narrative techniques into high-volume, mobile-friendly formats. Typically consisting of vertical episodes lasting between 60 seconds and five minutes, these productions squash the narrative techniques of daytime soaps into mobile-friendly formats packed with cliffhangers and emotional twists.

In China alone, more than 830 million consumers are estimated to watch multiple seasons of micro-dramas, with over 60% paying for content. Outside China, the sector expects to generate roughly $3 billion in revenue in 2025, while the US market alone has become a $1.3 billion industry. 

Micro-dramas have become a proof of concept for a new attention economy, demonstrating that audiences will willingly consume serialised branded or commercial narratives if they're entertaining enough.

As a result, ‘branded entertainment’ can have a greater impact than conventional advertising. Brands are not simply sponsoring existing content that the audience sees a few times; they are adopting the micro-drama format, which has no end date. This creates an opportunity to truly own the narrative and build a loyal, engaged audience over time. 

Tune in next time

In 2026, the growing popularity of episodic, soap-opera-style storytelling among advertisers is closely connected to the same forces driving the micro-drama boom: fragmented attention, mobile-first viewing habits, rising customer acquisition costs, and the need to build ongoing audience relationships rather than generate one-off impressions.

In a world where the distinction between advertising and entertainment is becoming increasingly blurred, serialised storytelling remains one of the most effective mechanisms for reaching audiences. Brands need to stop thinking in terms of one-off campaigns and start moving towards content built for consistent, long-term character and narrative development, turning their marketing budget into an ongoing entertainment system. The techniques that once powered the early radio serials and television soap operas are as effective today as they ever were.