What is shoppertainment? And is your brand falling behind if you're not using it?

You might not have necessarily heard of “shoppertainment” but it’s secretly everywhere. You’ve seen it, even if you haven’t realised. 

Let’s start at the beginning… There was a time when brands just had to be good. Then they had to be better than their competitors. Now they have to be entertaining.

Welcome to shoppertainment: the slightly ridiculous, entirely unavoidable reality that if your brand isn’t fun, it probably isn’t selling.

This isn’t a trend in the usual sense. It’s not another “brands should be on TikTok” hot take that will quietly die in a strategy deck. It’s a structural shift in how people buy. Shopping used to sit at the end of a funnel. Now it lives inside the scroll.

And the scroll is entertainment.

The end of traditional selling

Traditional eCommerce was comfortingly logical...

Search → click → compare → buy.

That model is quietly collapsing.

Platforms like TikTok have replaced it with what they themselves call an “infinite loop” of discovery, validation, and purchase . You don’t go looking for products anymore. Products find you, mid-scroll, sandwiched between a GRWM and a stranger crying about their situationship.

The result is messy, nonlinear, and wildly effective.

One study found that 87% of users say TikTok content has influenced their purchases, while 73% feel a deeper connection to brands on the platform. That’s not just marketing effectiveness. That’s behavioural rewiring.

The implication is uncomfortable but simple: Your product is no longer what you sell, your brand is.

Brands are now broadcasters 

The shift to shoppertainment has forced brands into a role they didn’t apply for aka a media company. Not in a vague “we should tell stories” way. In a very literal, operational sense.

You need:

• A reasonable volume of content

• Rapid speed of production

• Cultural awareness and a good idea of what’s going on in the world

• And a tolerance for looking slightly unhinged online

Because the algorithm doesn’t reward polish. It rewards participation.

The brands winning here aren’t necessarily the biggest or the most premium. They’re the ones that understand the game. They jump on trends quickly, they let creators shape the narrative, and they prioritise watchability over brand guidelines.

Take the explosion of TikTok Shop. It’s not just a new channel. It’s a different kind of retail entirely. In the UK, it has already become one of the largest beauty retail platforms, driven largely by creators selling products through content rather than traditional ads .

One beauty brand reportedly hit £40 million in revenue after seeding products to creators and letting the content do the selling. No glossy campaign. No big media spend. Just content that people actually wanted to watch.

The rise of “accidental” marketing

Shoppertainment works because it doesn’t feel like marketing. Or at least, it pretends not to.

The best-performing content rarely looks like an ad. It looks like a recommendation from a “friend”,  a joke, a review, simply or a trend.  And that’s not accidental. It’s structural.

Consumers are tired. They skip ads instinctively. Around 90% of digital ads are skipped. The brain has learned to filter them out. But entertainment slips through.

This is why #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has racked up tens of billions of views. Not because people suddenly love shopping more, but because shopping has been disguised as content.

It’s also why brands that cling to traditional “campaign thinking” struggle here. Campaigns have start and end dates. Shoppertainment doesn’t. It’s continuous, reactive, and slightly chaotic.

You don’t launch. You participate.

Gamification: Making buying feel like playing

The other half of shoppertainment is interaction. It’s not enough to watch anymore. People expect to do something.

Retailers are leaning into this through gamification. Virtual stores with mini-games, interactive experiences, even themed digital environments are becoming more common, especially with Gen Z audiences .

On paper, this sounds gimmicky. In practice, it works. Because it taps into a deeper shift: consumers don’t just want products. They want experiences that justify their attention. And attention is the real currency here.

If someone spends five minutes engaging with your brand through a game, a livestream, or a piece of content, you’ve already won half the battle. The purchase becomes a by-product.

The uncomfortable truth: Yes, this is more work

There’s a tendency to romanticise shoppertainment as this organic, creative playground where brands can “just have fun.”That’s not quite true. It’s actually more demanding

than traditional marketing.

You need:

• faster feedback loops

• more content than you think is reasonable

• creators who understand your audience better than you do

• and a willingness to let go of control

Because the moment content feels forced, it dies.

There’s also a strategic tension that’s becoming increasingly obvious. Platforms like TikTok want to keep the entire journey in-app aka discovery, consideration, purchase. That reduces friction, but it also means brands give up ownership of the customer relationship.

As one marketer put it in a Reddit discussion:

“Sell where they are, then migrate them to where you are.”

Not every brand should implement shoppertainment

Let’s be real, not every brand is naturally entertaining. And forcing it can backfire.

There are already plenty of examples of brands trying too hard, jumping on trends that don’t fit, or producing content that feels like it was approved by six committees and a risk register. It doesn’t work. But opting out isn’t really an option either.

Because the underlying shift isn’t about TikTok specifically. It’s about attention economics. Consumers now expect:

• discovery to be entertaining

• content to be native to the platform

• and shopping to feel frictionless

Even traditionally “serious” brands are being pulled into this. Supermarkets, legacy retailers, even financial services are experimenting with content-led commerce because the alternative is invisibility.

How shoppertainment works: Entertainment first, commerce second

If there’s one principle that defines shoppertainment, it’s this: Entertainment is the product. Commerce is the outcome.

The brands that understand this build content people would watch even if they weren’t selling anything. The ones that don’t end up making slightly awkward videos that look like ads pretending not to be ads. And consumers can tell the difference instantly.

Shoppertainment, how can you handle this new way of marketing? 

If you strip away the buzzword, shoppertainment is just a brutal reframing of marketing: You’re not competing with your category. You’re competing with everything else in the feed.

That includes creators, memes, reality TV clips, and someone live-streaming themselves organising their fridge.

It’s not a fair fight. But it is the game. And the brands that win won’t be the ones with the best products or the biggest budgets.

They’ll be the ones that understand something slightly uncomfortable: People don’t want to be sold to. They want to be entertained.

Sell them something along the way, and that’s a bonus.

Want to know how you can tackle shoppertainment in real life? Speak to us today.