Entertainment Marketing

Typical Day:  Nabil’s typical day when he was VP of marketing at ABC Network (TV)

MORNING… I’d wake up and look at the overnight ratings of the shows that I was working on.  Which shows resonated with audiences, which shows didn’t?  Why? Then, the first thing I would usually do when I got to the office was attend a team meeting to look at the ratings and “troubleshoot.”  Troubleshooting would mean adjusting on-air promos, adjusting messaging online through digital and social platforms… and then looking at the larger scope: where were we spending our media dollars, and where should we spending them?

Real world example:  A popular half-hour comedy show.  The show had started off really well, but then the ratings dipped a little bit. We dealt with some issues and controversy around characters that might not appeal as much in certain regions of the country, so we readjusted our media dollars, and regionalized our promos to showcase certain aspects of the show in certain regions.  We were able to bring our ratings back up.

Then in a typical afternoon, I’d be looking at key art, or watching episodes for the following week of shows, or figuring out how we’re going to use clips from the upcoming episodes for this week’s promos.

At the end of the day, I’d be in meetings with showrunners (people who “run” the TV shows) or maybe with the various studios that produce the shows.  TV has evolved so that new shows are coming up all the time now and not just at fall preview, so I might be checking out new shows, finding new ideas, or coming up with new strategies to keep our shows top of mind.

• Passion for TV and/or Film
• Be creative, come up with ideas on the spot.
• Be bold and take initiative.
  • Don’t be too cautious.  Must be willing to speak up in meetings, throw your ideas out there, not afraid of being wrong from time to time
  • Be able to take reigns of project, be project leader, figure out what needs to happen and get it done quickly, because things often need to happen quickly
• Research and analysis
  • It’s important to educate yourself and research the brands you are working on.  Not only, how will you reach the obvious audience, but how will you bring in new audiences?
  • Marketing is not what people think it is.  Others might thing it’s “spending money” and “advertising”.  But like anything else, you can’t figure out how to market if you don’t know how to spend that money.  The only way to market effectively is if you do your research and know how to interpret it.  
  • Ratings, demographics: interpreting that research, understanding the types of shows that work in different regions, understanding how to reach different groups of people, through which channels.  Understanding communities, their faiths, their background… will help you figure out how to spend your money most effectively.
• Networking is key!
  • You never know where your next job will come from.  This is a highly social and networked industry.  Most positions get filled through referrals or through the industry reputation you’ve built for yourself.
• Good at working on a team, brainstorming
• Street smarts
• Project management skills.  Be detail oriented, highly organized, able to multi-task, prioritize project workflow, and follow through.

"Watching movies and television shows has always been a passion for me.  I love the idea of connecting people to creative content.  Marketing, to me, is connecting.  It’s about finding audiences that already exist for the content you’ve created and then connecting with them.  Everything that’s created has an audience, it just varies on how big that audience is.  Sometimes we’re tasked with finding a way of communicating that can help something that’s maybe not even that appealing to somehow find its audience.  In my experience, some of the most unique and clever marketing ideas come from those tougher projects, and those in turn might help you when you’re launching something bigger in the future.” Nabil Kazi, veteran entertainment marketing executive (Fox, ABC Television, Disney Animation Studios)

TV Categories

• Digital Marketing:  Marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, cellphones, digital billboards, and game consoles to engage with consumers and other business partners.
• Affiliate Marketing:  Performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.
• Print: Any promotional marketing that is printed, such as magazine ads, newspaper ads, direct mail postcards, fliers, brochures, door hangers and business cards.
• On-Air Promotions
• Integrated Promotions:  Approach to brand communications where the different modes work together to create a seamless experience for the customer and are presented with a similar tone and style that reinforces the brand’s core message.
• Marketing Strategy: Long-term strategy determined to optimize the allocation of limited resources of an organization on the best opportunities to increase sales and achieve a competitive advantage.

Film Categories

• Live Action (non-animated)
• Animation
• International
• Digital
• Print
• Creative

• Film Studio or Production Company
• TV Studio or Production Company
• Digital Agency
• Advertising Agency
• PR Firm

At the beginning of your career, if you are not able to get a marketing internship at first, you might have to start out in another area within a film or TV company, to get your start.

It is now crucial for ALL marketing executives (whether they work in digital or not) to have a decent understanding of the mechanics and influence of digital and social networks.

Loved watching movies and/or TV!