2025 Clio Entertainment Awards spotlight campaigns for Severance, Wicked and Sinners

13 November 2025

The 2025 Clio Entertainment Awards ceremony honoured the marketing and communications teams that turned films and television series into cultural moments rather than mere releases. At a gala held in Hollywood the evening brought together the industry’s most daring campaigns, announced multiple Grand Clio winners and signalled shifting norms in how entertainment is marketed in the streaming era.

Television campaign honours prominently went to Severance, which secured Grand Clios in multiple major categories including integrated campaign, public relations and design. The series’ minimalist, haunting visual language and immersive promotional outreach set new benchmarks for how storyworlds extend into real-world touchpoints. Leveraging ambient installations, AR filters and viral enigmas the campaign invited audience engagement beyond conventional trailers and ads.

In the film space the campaign for Wicked earned a Grand Clio for its partnership-driven integrated campaign, while Sinners from Warner Bros. Pictures took home the Grand Clio in the integrated campaign category as well. Both efforts were celebrated for blending brand collaborations, experiential activations and immersive social-media formats that generated not just awareness but cultural traction. The Wicked campaign, for example, rolled out interactive outdoor installations, live-experience pop-ups and bespoke merchandise alongside a global teaser sequence that built hype months in advance of release.

Beyond individual campaign wins the awards night also recognised broader achievements in entertainment-marketing leadership. Netflix was named Network of the Year an acknowledgment of its investment in campaign innovation and its ability to mobilise international audiences. Warner Bros. Pictures earned Studio of the Year, underscoring the leadership role of premium theatrical content in the evolving ecosystem. A lifetime-achievement type honour the Clio Entertainment Impact Award was granted to industry veteran Jim Frederick in recognition of his work spanning decades of film marketing and his role in creating campaign models now considered staples.

For marketers, producers and studios the significance of the 2025 winners is two‐fold. First, they reflect the economic pressures and audience fragmentation that demand campaigns become more than promotional they must act as culture-makers. In a world of streaming, global release windows and algorithm-driven discovery, the campaigns that stand out are the ones that feel participatory, transmedia and long-tail rather than singular bursts. Severance, Wicked and Sinners each embraced that dynamic and the awards validate that shift.

Second, the nominations and winners reinforce that agency, platform and studio collaboration must now include experience design, data-driven influencer outreach, real-time analytics and global localisation. In the past a marketing campaign might focus on trailers and poster art; now it requires layered creative ecosystems: AR experiences, interactive mobile games, limited-edition community drops, surprise reveal events and transnational rollout strategies that consider TikTok replicability, Instagram virality and fandom momentum. This year’s winners embodied that convergence.

For audiences the ripple effects are clear. When marketing campaigns break out of the advertiser sandbox and into culture when they become memes, event-series, gamified experiences they begin to shape the way entertainment is consumed. The Wicked campaign’s pop-up installations became selfie destinations; the Severance campaign’s viral puzzles played out on Instagram; both created moments people participated in, not just watched. That means marketing no longer waits on release day it runs in real time.

Looking ahead the message is inevitable: entertainment campaigns must think like publishers, media companies and cultural platforms all at once. The costs are rising, the stakes higher and the measured success increasingly based on metrics like “heard-in conversation,” “used in leisure time” and “memed on social” rather than simply “paid impressions.” 2025’s winners show how successful teams are rewriting the rules.

In summary the 2025 Clio Entertainment Awards did more than hand out trophies they spotlighted the evolution of marketing in an entertainment landscape where stories must live in screens, feeds and even physical space simultaneously. By awarding Severance, Wicked and Sinners the top creative honours the industry affirmed that marketing innovation is now integral to release strategy, brand momentum and audience connection.