The Daily Brief Podcast | Promaxbda

About a month ago, music production company Man Made Music announced it was changing its name to Made Music Studio. As part of that move, it released its anti-racism manifesto and launched a partnership with global community disrupter Decolonize Design. The change at Made Music isn’t a facelift, but a wholesale shift within the organization to think, act, hire and create differently.Lauren McGuire, president of Made Music Studio, and Aida Mariam Davis, founder of Decolonize Design, join the podcast to discuss the hows and whys of this shift -- what it means to have an anti-racist agenda; why it’s important for employees and companies to understand the importance of being an anti-racist from the inside out; and why belonging, dignity and justice are the next level up from diversity, equity and inclusion.

Customer experience agency Definition 6 joins the podcast to discuss why all entertainment services need to dive deeply into the world of data-driven performance marketing.

Garen Van de Beek and Lori Shefa worked together for 23 years marketing and promoting hit shows at CBS. When both were leaving the company last spring, they decided they would prefer not to leave each other. So they launched new agency RM 15 (pronounced “room 15”) after the basement office they shared for years at CBS TV City in Los Angeles. Van de Beek and Shefa have a lot to say about the business of marketing network TV and about the changes that have arrived due to digital and streaming.In this fun and wide-ranging conversation, they also reveal a few other nuggets, such as “what those digital people whose offices were on the roof of CBS doing for all those years” and “why showrunners and network executives should first talk to the marketing people before naming their shows.” (Looking at you, The Good Wife. Great show, less great title.) Tune in to this episode to hear more tidbits drawn from the more than 50 years of experience shared by these two pros.

Linda Ong and Sarah Unger have joined forces to launch Cultique, which will craft custom cultural insights for forward-looking businesses. In this episode, Ong and Unger discuss their vision for the venture, which becomes its own boutique brand under the Civic umbrella.

Allan Gungormez, SVP, strategy, mOcean joins to discuss why the Los Angeles-based creative agency (and three-time Promax Agency of the Year) decided it was necessary to expand its offerings into social and digital strategy.

Michael Vamosy has been on all sides of entertainment marketing, having led teams on the network side at Fox, FX and Starz and on the agency side at Stun. Now he’s launching his own agency, Fathom, in partnership with SmithGeiger. In this conversation, Vamosy chats about his vision for his new agency, what makes it a little different and how he came to this point of view.

Leadership expert Esther Weinberg joins to discuss Promax's new leadership program, Promax Next, that she specifically developed to help high-potential managers move to the next level in their careers and to help their teams and organizations do as well.

It’s arguably been a summer of symbols, starting with the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day, rejuvenating the #BlackLivesMatter movement; to watching the simple face mask become the symbol of a nation divided; to seeing iconic but problematic brands, such as Aunt Jemimah, Uncle Ben, the Washington Redskins and several more get pulled from their previously public-facing positions. What it all proves is that symbols have power and that people need to think about the nuances of what those symbols mean before just blithely accepting them. In a conversation recorded just after July 4, Loyalkaspar Chief Creative Officer Beat Baudenbacher joins to talk about the power of symbols and what that power means for brands. rjhxEzyE92abvR2yts1C

Promax President and CEO joins RevThink's Joel Pilger on the RevThinking podcast to discuss how Promax moved its annual conference online and what that change means for the future of the organization.

Civic Entertainment Group's Linda Ong and Pop'N Creative's Lori Hall join to discuss what brands must do to commit to diversity and inclusion while combating systemic racism.

Civic Entertainment Group Chief Culture Officer Linda Ong returns to discuss the essay she wrote for Medium, titled: "America's Eat the Rich Moment: Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable." In this episode, she deciphers the moment and offers a roadmap on how we can all -- as brands, consumers and human beings -- become allies in the fight for equality.

When Kelli Miller and Kendra Eash started Brooklyn-based creative agency And/Or in 2014, they wanted to create a studio where they could practice the kind of creative they craved. And they’ve done that, with packages for FX’s Cake, Quibi’s The Rachel Hollis Show and many more. But as a queer couple as well as business partners, they’ve also doubled down on their commitment to diversity, inclusion and representation, all of which is in the cultural spotlight as protests against police brutality rage on across the country and people celebrate Pride, even if only virtually.  

When five years of preparation and planning went out the window when the pandemic hit, Los Angeles, Dallas and Montreal-based creative studio ATK PLN didn’t panic, they pivoted.With their movie, Scoob!, produced by sister company Reel FX Animation Studios for Warner Bros., now moving to premium video on demand (PVOD) instead of theatrical release, the studio had to think fast to devise new ways of getting the word out. Social media had always been a big part of the plan, and those assets rolled out as intended. A TikTok video featuring an animated Scooby Doo quickly exploded, reaching as many as 5 billion views, and the studio also created a Mystery Machine Instagram filter as well as trailers, music videos and posters. In this episode, ATK PLN’s Executive Creative Director Jose Sebastian Gomez and Managing Director David Bates discuss what it takes to create a massive content strategy and see it through to the end even if you encounter a global pandemic along the way.

Brands that empower their consumers can find it has a positive impact on their business, Fuse Media found in its latest demographic study.In this episode, Fuse Media Head of Marketing Mark McIntire takes on empowerment and brand purpose, topics that are particularly relevant right now. He also discusses why Fuse’s Future History Month and Be Change campaigns have been effective, how Fuse managed to change out its messaging so quickly and what’s on the horizon for the youth-focused brand.

Josh Norton and Carson Hood, executive creative director and executive producer at New York City-based creative agency Bigstar, discuss what work in entertainment marketing might look like once the pandemic finally passes. Among the topics we discuss: resiliency, flexibility, creativity and innovation, with a dip into silver linings at the end.

As TV viewers increasingly find themselves out of work, they are looking to pay less for their TV options, said Ben Carlson, senior vice president, general manager of streaming and platforms, MarketCast, in this episode drawn from a recent virtual session.“Previously, people were time-starved and had money to add subscriptions, but what we’re seeing is our time go up while our money goes down. That has recalibrated our notion of value,” said Carlson.While that’s a key takeaway from Carlson’s presentation, it’s far from the only one. Listen in to hear Carlson’s insights on how marketers should approach audiences as the pandemic wears on.

Film and TV production has been conducted in a certain way with certain structures in place since production began more than 100 years ago.Now with the global pandemic forcing us to question everything we’ve known and done, Becky Morrison, founder of Brooklyn-based boutique production company The Light, is questioning what could change for the better when it comes to production.For example, do there need to be so many people on set at any given time? Should all below-the-line roles be so clear cut and specific? Should all creative ideas come from the top down? (Short answer: no.)In this conversation, which includes such tactical considerations as safety as well as more cultural considerations such as hierarchy, Morrison discusses different ways everything from social posts to promos to advertising to big-budget movies could be produced as we all try to find our way into the new normal.

In this episode, drawn from Promax's latest Virtual Session, Lydia Daly, senior vice president, and Mary Kate Cullen, senior director, at Viacom CBS creative strategy and cultural intelligence present a session called #AllTheFeels, which offers some different lenses through which marketers can view and approach the very emotional generation known as Gen Z. One caveat, not everything in this presentation is necessarily appropriate for the younger side of Gen Z, and aside from the talk of TikTok, they probably won’t be interested anyway. If you would like to watch this presentation -- as opposed to listen to it -- a video is available at brief.promax.org.

Tegna’s Meredith Conte summed it up: “A crisis is what local news is made for, and the way our teams have quickly rallied has been nothing short of miraculous and impressive." Fox's John Kukla and Sinclair's Dan Zimmerman joined Conte to discuss the many ways TV stations have had to be agile, yet effective, during the pandemic, in a session presented by Stephen Arnold Music.

Just like all small businesses in this challenging time, creative agencies have quickly had to rejigger their businesses, sending everyone home to work and checking in with all their clients over video calls. In this session, drawn from Promax’s new series of virtual sessions, Promax President and CEO Steve Kazanjian conducts a Q&A with three agency business development executives: Danixa Diaz, executive producer at iArtists; David Edelstein, executive director at Trollbäck+Company; and Tony Kadillak, executive director at Thornberg and Forester.