There comes a point when advertising stops being a message and becomes an experience. This is where Kate McCagg, Global Director of Brand Innovation Lab at Amazon Ads and Twitch Brand Partnership Studio, begins in her keynote at Intersections 2025: Breaking Creative Boundaries – The Art and Science of Digital Storytelling.
The premise is simple but disruptive: today, an effective ad doesn’t just need to be noticed, it needs to be remembered. And to achieve this, it must integrate into people’s lives, not interrupt them. For Amazon Ads, advertising doesn’t interrupt the customer journey, it accompanies it, adding value and relevance to every interaction.
In 2025, this approach is more relevant than ever. Consumers expect experiences that are meaningful, consistent, and inspiring: 80% say they love brands that make them feel inspired, while 79% prefer brands that share their values (source: Amazon Ads Higher Impact Report 2025). It’s a shift from visibility to relevance, from “seeing” to “feeling.”
In this context, Amazon offers a new vision of digital storytelling: a narrative that lives within an integrated ecosystem of platforms, where technology, data, and creativity merge to create seamless, personalized experiences. McCagg talks about the “art of the possible”, exploring the creative possibilities that emerge when brands and platforms work together to shape stories that move across content, commerce, and community.
Two campaigns concretely illustrate this approach. The first is the Nissan Possibilities Project, an initiative promoting inclusion in sports. Not just a simple sponsorship, but a story built across Amazon channels, from an emotionally engaging docuseries on Prime Video to an extension on Twitch, featuring live interviews and community-created content.
The second example, “Flavors of Azeroth”, comes from the world of World of Warcraft and brings fan culture into the real world. In collaboration with Twitch and Amazon Fresh, streamers and creators recreated the game’s recipes live, allowing users to order the ingredients on Amazon so they could replicate the dishes at home. An idea that combines food and entertainment, digital and physical, into a shared and memorable experience.
Through these projects, McCagg demonstrates that attention isn’t earned by force, it is earned through listening to people’s passions and having the courage to experiment with new languages in familiar places. “Gaining audience attention isn’t easy,” she concludes, “but when we start from their interests and combine unexpected ideas with relevant experiences, we can create lasting connections.”
In a world where traditional advertising struggles to stand out, Amazon bets on the intersection of the art and science of digital storytelling. Because the future of marketing won’t just be about saying something, it will be about creating something worth experiencing.
