From Coke Studio To Sprite ‘Truth & Spice’: Are Brands Moving Beyond Traditional Ads To Build Cultural IPs?

For years, advertising followed a familiar formula: identify the audience, create the message, put it in front of them and measure the response. But as consumers become increasingly selective about what they watch, skip and engage with, brands are beginning to rethink their role in popular culture.

The question is no longer simply how many people saw an ad. It is increasingly about what did the brand create that people wanted to experience, share and remember?

This is where the rise of branded entertainment and cultural IPs becomes significant.

From Coke Studio building a music ecosystem around artists, sounds and collaborations to Sprite’s latest ‘Truth & Spice’, which brings together celebrities, creators, food and challenges in a digital entertainment format, brands are moving closer to becoming content creators and cultural participants rather than remaining advertisers on the sidelines.

From interruption to participation

Traditional advertising is built around interruption. Cultural IPs work differently. They invite audiences into an experience.

Coke Studio is a strong example of this evolution. Music is not simply being used as a backdrop for a product message; it becomes the centre of the consumer experience. Artists, languages, genres and collaborations create a world that audiences can return to.

Sprite’s Truth & Spice takes a different route. The brand has extended its long-standing association with spice into an entertainment format built around celebrity pairings, spicy food, candid conversations and challenges.

The strategic shift is important. Instead of asking consumers to watch a 30-second advertisement, the brand is creating a format in which the brand itself becomes part of the entertainment.

That is a very different proposition.

The rise of the brand IP

The growing interest in cultural IPs also reflects a larger change in the entertainment economy. Audiences are no longer consuming culture through a single medium.

Music lives on streaming platforms, short-form video, live events and social media. Creators move between entertainment, commerce and community. A song can become a Reel, a concert can become content, and a branded property can become a recurring cultural moment.

For marketers, this creates an opportunity,but also raises the bar.

A brand-owned IP cannot simply look like an advertisement stretched into a longer format. It needs a reason to exist beyond the brand itself.

That means the entertainment proposition has to be strong enough to attract an audience even before the branding enters the conversation.

Music has already shown the way

Music has perhaps been one of the clearest examples of this transformation.

The traditional brand-music relationship was often built around sponsorships, celebrity endorsements or the occasional jingle. Today, brands are increasingly exploring original music properties, artist collaborations, live experiences and platforms that can create sustained engagement.

Coke Studio demonstrated how a brand could build a recognisable cultural property around music rather than simply advertise around it.

The lesson extends beyond music: when a brand creates a platform instead of merely buying media, it can potentially become part of the cultural conversation itself.

This is particularly relevant as younger audiences increasingly discover brands through entertainment and creators rather than conventional advertising.

But does every brand need an IP?

Not necessarily.

The temptation for marketers can be to chase the next Coke Studio or the next viral entertainment format. But cultural relevance cannot be manufactured simply by putting celebrities together or creating a branded content series.

The strongest properties usually have three things working together: a distinctive brand truth, an audience-relevant cultural insight and an entertainment format people genuinely want to engage with.

Sprite’s Truth & Spice, for instance, takes an existing brand association,spice and translates it into a format built around conversation, challenges and celebrity chemistry.

That connection between brand DNA and entertainment idea is critical.

Without it, branded entertainment risks becoming content that audiences consume without remembering who created it.

The new measurement challenge

There is another question marketers will increasingly have to answer: How do you measure a cultural IP?

Views and reach remain important, but they tell only part of the story.

If a brand is investing in a music platform, entertainment property or creator ecosystem, the measurement framework needs to extend to brand recall, distinctive association, participation, repeat consumption, earned conversation and ultimately business impact.

A successful IP should ideally build an asset that becomes more valuable over time.

That is where the distinction between campaign and cultural property becomes important.

A campaign has a start and an end. A cultural IP has the potential to accumulate meaning.

The next phase of advertising

The future may not be about choosing between advertising and entertainment. It may be about making the distinction less relevant.

Brands will continue to need traditional advertising. But alongside it, we are likely to see more brands create spaces where consumers can participate rather than simply receive a message.

Music, comedy, sport, food, gaming and creator-led formats all offer opportunities to build these spaces.

The brands that understand this shift will not necessarily ask, “How do we make our ad more entertaining?”

They may ask a more fundamental question:

“What can we create that people would choose to experience even if it did not feel like an ad?”

From Coke Studio to Sprite’s Truth & Spice, that shift is already becoming visible. The next frontier of brand building could belong to those that stop thinking only in terms of campaigns and start thinking in terms of culture, community and enduring IPs.