Campaign Visionaries Examine Future of Media at Variety’s Entertainment Marketing Summit

After two years of the pandemic, top marketers will meet together in person at the Variety Entertainment Marketing Summit, presented by Deloitte, at the NeueHouse in Hollywood on May 24. This year’s panels explore many of the biggest marketing and media shifts to emerge in recent months.

Jana Arbanas, U.S. Telecom, media & entertainment sector leader for Deloitte, will head up a keynote conversation: Can SVOD Keep Up with the Next Generation of Media? The talk will dive into findings from Deloitte’s Digital Media Trends Survey 2022.

“The streaming landscape continues to be massively competitive and we’re continuing to see new entrants in the market,” Arbanas says. “Our younger generations are driving quite a bit of that volatility very specifically in terms of their willingness to sign up for services and cancel services and have new services, to create a really personalized bundle of the content they’re looking for while also managing cost.”

Some streamers look to meet their viewers where they are in their communities as it becomes safer to move into the world again. Social activism and outreach can create and maintain a relevant dialogue.

“From a marketing perspective, in terms of how things are changed, we, like a lot of other brands, pivoted to doing things virtually for a while,” says Jackie Gagne, senior VP, multicultural marketing, Warner Bros. Discovery. Gagne will speak at the Marketing for Social Good — Delivering on Promises panel.

“A lot of our work for the multicultural marketing team is experiential because we create experiences for the communities that we serve.”

As part of a campaign for “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” Gagne’s team refurbished a basketball court in Inglewood, Calif., with the help of Project Backboard. The idea was to leave a positive, lasting impact on the community.

The Power Marketers of the Music Industry panel will look at strategies for breaking artists and music. The music business was hit particularly hard over the past two years due to canceled concerts and festivals.

“We have social media but at the end of the day, we’re selling music and we’re selling artists,” says Kendra Ellis, VP of marketing for Atlantic Records, who is among the panelists. “So, the fact that they’re now able to get back on stages in front of fans, I think is a really good thing.”

Ellis says social media will continue to be important for new artists and help audiences discover fresh music. She also sees streaming live events such as Coachella as an impactful way to showcase artists and bands since audiences will be able to see what they can do in a live environment.

Atlantic recently partnered with Roblox, the global online gaming platform, to create a launch party for recording artist Why Don’t We that included exclusive performances for fans. The unique experience was a way to reach fans in their homes and gain awareness among gamers.

“I think for us it’s really doubling down on customer obsession,” says Ukonwa Ojo, global CMO of Prime Video, who will join the conversation at the Meet the Masters Keynote Roundtable.

“One of the things we’ve learned in the last two years is the world can change by a significant amount very quickly,” Ojo says. “What that has taught us is we really have to stay close [to our consumer]. We stayed close from a behavioral standpoint because we have a lot of behavioral data.”

Adrienne Lahens, who will speak at the Visionaries of Creator Marketing panel, says marketing budgets for collabs with creators will continue to increase. The global head of operations for TikTok creator marketing solutions says they’ll continue to give brands something they can’t get anywhere else.

“It’s word-of-mouth marketing at scale,” Lahens says. “You hear about a brand from someone you know, from someone you love, from your friend or your family or someone you follow, that carries a whole lot more than a brand saying, ‘Here’s my product come buy me.’ That’s true of anything. So, the sort of realness and authenticity, and having a human advocate, someone really humanizing your brand, and creating content that’s truly emotive and resonates with people, certainly is one huge piece [of what creators offer].”

Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts!