Why Is Entertainment Defined By Genre When The Audience Is Not?

In the 90s, if you wore a band’s t-shirt, that signaled nearly everything about your taste, media preferences, identity, and social circle. We know today however, that because of digital, consumer taste is more diverse, eclectic and anchored in the ability to discover pop culture without boundaries. So why then, does Entertainment continue to curate, market, and categorize content (series, movies, or music) so deeply by genre? From streaming platform curation to content and music roll out plans, we continue to lean on genre while audiences, and creators, reject its labels and limitations. A few things resonating in pop culture, and marketing, suggest a greater opportunity for campaigns to capture a wider audience, and stand out, by genre-hopping.

We wrote previously about Beyonce’s evolution into a Country aesthetic, allowing new audiences to find their way into her material through genre-hopping. In the same context, this week Machine Gun Kelly and Trippie Redd rolled out a new project that flip flopped each artist’s musical brand, pulling Redd into Emo and mgk back into lyrical content closer to Hip Hop.

The ad community can’t get enough of Liquid Death, but the industry often fails to recognize the core insight that drives the fun of their marketing: it’s a product, water, marketed by the playbook of a different category: over the top energy drinks. Not unlike when a rapper goes Emo to capture a wider audience or to stand out in their lane. Entertainment marketing often banks on a singular message for a monolithic audience. Does that feel right for an emerging generation, Gen Z, who is famous for identity that is more plural than singular, more complex than confined to labels?

Culture overall, as a result of Gen Z's influence, has become so fluid: from the rise of embracing emotional seasons, to multigenre music taste, to fashion trends that span subcultures and continents, to gender identity and sexuality that doesn’t fit in a box. That cultural truth isn't just an inspiration, it is permission for campaigns to be just as fluid as the audience. House of the Dragon S2, for example, just kicked off its campaign with two-trailers. While the strategy is anchored in a boiling rivalry that defined S1, it’s also an approach that sheds the singular habits of Entertainment marketing by driving interest with not one but multiple psychographics and taste communities -- who may be totally unique, and who may come to the show for entirely different reasons.