Entertaiment is amusement, typically involving some kind of performance. The clown at a kid’s birthday party, a Broadway show, your friend fighting over the last potato chip at a stadium rock concert, are all forms of entertainment. It’s about distraction, or a break from the grind, whether it’s the monotony of work or the stress of life. It can be playful or serious, but is always meant to be a good time.
Today’s entertainment companies don’t mainly tell stories (though they often do). They manage the proprieties of those stories in such a way that they generate and sustain deep affinity, i.e., build love. They also monetize that love. This is the new, and challenging, definition of entertainment. And it has implications for every type of business. It’s a whole different game than it was in the past, when the most successful entertainment companies were primarily about making movies or TV shows. Those days are over. Today, the most successful entertainment companies are about building love and monetizing it. And they’re doing it with technology and a new mindset.