Paramount Advertising President John Halley was preparing to preside over an upfront pitch to Publicis, one of the four major holding companies in the ad business, when big news crossed the wire.
Bob Bakish was officially out as CEO of Paramount Global. Much of the reason that the 27-year company veteran lost favor with board members and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone had to do with intensifying merger talks, which have also kept Paramount in the headlines.
A couple of hours before the Publicis dinner, Paramount capped its newsy day by conducting a 9-minute earnings call and declining to field any questions from Wall Street analysts. “It’s not my favorite backdrop,” Halley dryly conceded in an interview with Deadline. “I thought, ‘Is this going to derail our messaging?’ And we got into the room and it was very clear immediately that that was background and not foreground.
We acknowledged it, we moved on. … But the fact is, we’ve got a story to tell. That’s what our partners and clients want to hear.” Halley said the new strategic approach to upfront selling, which he instituted in 2023, has provided a boost despite – or, in a weird way, because of – the corporate drama.
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