Latest in Marketing

EXCLUSIVE: Authentic Brands Group said Tuesday it acquired a 20% equity stake in live events and content production company Medium Rare for an undisclosed sum. ABG's stakeholder, Shaquille O'Neal, helped broker the deal. The basketball great already works closely with Medium Rare, which produces a festival experience…

A small side-effect of the pandemic—very small, given the scale of the overall disaster—has been an obvious buckling of the film calendar. Dates have been pushed. Release dates revised. Decisions postponed. The awards season is a mess. In a normal year, like dimly remembered 2019, the movie media and their minders…

It’s beginning to look a lot like free Showtime content for Christmas. The premium cabler is gifting the premiere episodes of the final season of Shameless and the new Bryan Cranston limited series Your Honor as part of 60-plus hours of originals available today online, on streaming platforms and on-demand into…

A major acceleration of Hollywood studio and travel advertising could inject up to 10% in incremental ad spending on national television in the second half of 2021, spending that won't be present this year, according to the latest forecast by Group M. National TV ad spend will fall by 7.9% this year but next year to…

No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. Eric Clapton and Van Morrison are finding that out today, as their effort to support musicians affected by the pandemic is drawing backlash. Clapton and Morrison have teamed for Stand and Deliver, a new song that decries Covid-19 lockdowns. The track will be available…

The annual holiday tradition of a special edition of Doctor Who will have some shocking twists in its upcoming launch. The Doctor’s arch-enemy, the Daleks, will sport a new look. Gone is the toilet plunger and the crude mechanical outside. Now, the Daleks have a sleek new exterior, which was previewed on the front of…

The retail mayhem known as Black Friday was bleak today at most stores across the country. Instead of large lines and customers fighting for discount TVs, many outlets were nearly empty. The down market on what’s typically the busiest day of the year for retail reflects the fear of Covid-19 contagion and perhaps the lo…

Faizon Love sued Universal Pictures today, accusing it of violating California’s fair employment and civil rights laws with the international poster for its 2009 comedy movie Couples Retreat, calling it an “act of racism.” It also claims the studio reneged on a promise to get Love future roles when they originally…

EXCLUSIVE: Despite the severe ratcheting down of movie theaters during the pandemic in recent weeks, Universal is standing strong with a robust global promotional campaign behind its DreamWorks Animation sequel The Croods: A New Age which opens today at 2,211 theaters. While the marketing spend on domestic wide…

EXCLUSIVE: There is a marketing restructuring underway at Skydance Media. We can tell you first that WME senior marketing exec and former Paramount Pictures co-president of domestic marketing Rebecca Mall is in final talks to join the David Ellison-run studio in a newly designed head of marketing role that oversees…

EXCLUSIVE: With all the tentpole release-date changes during the pandemic, it’s been quite an erratic time for studios and their promotional marketing and merchandising partners. It has created supply chain issues whereby those goods attached to a movie have been triggered to go sooner than expected, i.e., Warner Bros…

A war has broken out online between singer-songwriter Sia and the autism community over her upcoming film, Music. The controversy was sparked by the release of the trailer for the film, which depicts a young woman with autism, played by dancer/actress Maddie Ziegler. The portrayal was deemed “offensive” and…