Variety’s 2024 Entertainment Marketing Summit to Examine Industry Trends, Successful Campaigns Like ‘Oppenheimer’

variety.com:

Karen Idelson With the pandemic in media executives’ rearview mirrors, media trends are still emerging at the speed of sound, and this year’s Variety Entertainment Marketing Summit, presented by Deloitte, will spotlight the strategies of top industry marketers.

The event will take place April 24 in Los Angeles. Disney Entertainment Television marketing president Shannon Ryan will receive Variety’s inaugural Entertainment Marketing Icon Award in honor of her cutting-edge campaigns during her time at Fox and Disney.

Following the award presentation, Ryan will sit down for a conversation with Variety co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton. Dwight Caines, president of domestic marketing at Universal Pictures, will participate in the event’s “President Keynote Roundtable.” After a year that included the phenomenally successful campaign for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” Caines points to two particularly effective strategies. “It was time for us to double down on convention,” says Caines. “We trailered in theaters, saying that you need to see this film on the biggest screen.” Getting the notoriously internet-averse Nolan on digital platforms was their other tactic. “Connecting him with social media, with people who were meaningful to an audience, was I think one of the more exciting and interesting things that we were able to get him to agree to.” Media analysts report that audiences still seek authentic connections with everything from films to social media, but now increasingly do so simultaneously on multiple platforms — watching a movie while texting, for example, or consuming longform storytelling in smaller bites on social platforms like TikTok.