Case Study: A24

Break out of your category to grow

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A24 is a motorway in the south of Italy.

It is also a beloved independent movie studio, which has since its inception in 2012 became synonymous with a mood, a vibe, and a personality trait, along with some of the most creative and daring movie releases. A24 fans are numerous (there are more than 73,000 subscribers on r/A24 subreddit) and passionate, often ready to spend hundreds of dollars on the studio’s coveted merchandise.

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Early on, as a way to cut costs, the studio pursued word-of-mouth marketing instead of infinitely more costly traditional movie marketing tactics, like OOH or TV spots. Since then, A24 marketing has become a genre unto itself — the one which instinctively understands how people consume content online and how a movie can easily be translated into a GIF, a meme, a short video, a Tinder profile or an Etsy shop.

Through its movies, its marketing and its merch, A24 amassed a considerable cultural currency. To keep this currency growing, the company now needs to modernize their cultural influence strategy.

The streetwear merch drop model and socially native marketing can take A24 only so far before they start to feel tired. The cultural scene that A24 once emerged was defined by the moment the Internet switched from text to images and videos, propelling the heavily visual content that movies and TV shows are well positioned to capture.

Today we have many cultures, with new gatekeepers, tastemakers, curators and niches. Entertainment is consumed together with everything else in culture, and movie studios — even those as independent and lauded as A24 — are figuring out how to play across cultural fields (there are no less than 17 White Lotus Season 3 collaborations going on right now). Fashion houses are opening their own movie production studios (Saint Laurent produced Emilia Perez, LVMH launched 22 Montagne, and Kering acquired a stake in CAA).

Talent moves easily between cultural domains. Jonathan Anderson recently did costumes for Queer and Challengers, Takeshi Kitano has consistently used Yohji Yamamoto costumes in his movies, and Tom Ford directed A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals. Prada often partners with Hollywood talent for its campaigns, and it has a strong female filmmakers program.

Entertainment is one of the cultural products that brands use to participate in culture — even brands whose job is to produce and distribute this entertainment. Other cultural products are merch, collaborations, graphic design, archives, content …

A24 is a tastemaker. People turn to it to tell them what to watch; why not also tell them what to wear, where to go, what to read, and what to do.

To play as a tastemaker across multiple cultural fields, A24 needs to build a brand. This brand goes beyond an independent movie studio. Movies are one way to tell a story, and A24’s job is to figure out what other narrative devices are at its disposal.

This task is more prescient at A24’s current moment of growth. The studio recently completed another round of funding, with the new valuation of $3.5bn. It now features

Read about three brand models of growth based on three potential A24 brand architectures