Chick-Fil-a’s TV move makes jokes online, but it’s serious business

The news inspired plenty of jokes (Chick-philo? Merger opportunity?), questions (Would the content be available to stream on Sunday?) and hand-wringing. “If Chick-fil-A is known for anything besides its chicken, it’s probably the company’s longstanding institutional opposition to advances in LGBTQ+ rights,” Vulture said.

But the news shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Brands have been getting more serious about filmed entertainment for years, even before Barbie made her big screen debut, because regular old TV commercials don’t work for them as well as they used to. Starbucks, AB InBev, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola – the list of corporate giants using Hollywood to deliver their messages goes on. In fact, Chick-fil-A has been making animated shorts for several years.

Brands have sponsored filmed entertainment since the dawn of television, but now they want to control their own destiny rather than write a check. They hire top Hollywood talent to help them and retain the rights to the shows they make.

Brand Storytelling, an organization that organizes a festival for branded films, said that the number of films presented has tripled in recent years.

Brands have a bigger opening now as Hollywood budgets are cut. Within the brands, Hollywood sees not only a source of new shows they need to retain subscribers, but advertising dollars to go with them.

Many filmmakers are happy to get work because the days of entertainment companies spending at any cost to catch Netflix are over. Almost every manufacturing company has an arm dedicated to branding. Sugar23, one of the companies helping Chick-fil-A, has made a heavy pivot in that direction. A new company called Sonic Gods Studios is taking it a step further by making brands central to how they fund shows. The first show, a competition series called “60 Day Hustle” — funded by brands like BetterHelp, Chime and Square — debuted on Amazon this month.

The results of the brand’s forays into entertainment aren’t always inspiring. Many branded films seem like extended advertisements. Forget being sold; viewers will be bored most of the time.

We might not want our entertainment to come from the same people who give us laundry soap and sneakers—and fried chicken sandwiches. But like it or not, given the state of both Hollywood and advertising, the trend is likely to grow.