Strategy and design form the cornerstones of both the personal and the professional relationship between Justin and Emily Nardone, founders and partners at Los Angeles-based creative agency Bellaluca. In this episode, the Nardones share how they came together to evolve their individual work to a new place -- both literally and figuratively -- creat…

WAR’s Brien Holman discusses how the agency creates compelling visuals for audio-only content and why sound and music are so important in all types of marketing.

19th and Park Co-Founders Tahira White and Whitney Headen – president and CEO, respectively – discuss how they created and launched the New York City-based agency and its newly launched production company, 1Park9. They share what the two entities’ unique positioning is in the marketplace, why they felt the need to launch a division that’s entirely …

12 years ago, David Jeffers suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down. But through his recovery process, the mechanical engineer launched a new career based on one of his oldest passions: music and sound. And his old friend, Ricardo Roberts, executive producer at Los Angeles-based inclusive motion-graphics studio Bie…

Late last year, Rick Lewchuck, former senior vice president of creative marketing and brand standards at CNN Worldwide and former Promax board member, departed his post amid deep cost-cutting at CNN owner Warner Bros. Discovery. Lewchuck had been at CNN for a decade, following a 32-year career at Canada’s CTV. While at CNN, Lewchuk and his team wer…

As head of Fubo Sports Network and original programming, Pamela Duckworth brings 30 years of production, marketing and branding experience together to oversee Fubo Sports Network as well as Fubo Movie Network, Fubo Latino Network and soon, Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort Network. On Tuesday, Fubo announced that it was launching Fubo Sports Network on…

From NFTs to virtual influencers, augmented reality and crypto, the metaverse may feel like the Wild West, but for brands who embrace data-driven planning and are willing to iterate and evolve, it’s the biggest opportunity out there. And it’s coming fast, so it’s something all brands will want to take into consideration as they plan for the future.…

Earlier this year, two veteran creative directors – Ryan Summers and Brian Eloe – joined Denver-based creative agency Spillt, working with Owner and Executive Creative Director Ed Rhine. Summers comes from a motion-graphics background, while Eloe’s work has mostly been in live action, but together, the team takes on all sorts of projects as they lo…

As Loyalkaspar Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Beat Badenbacher hunkered down, like everyone else, during the pandemic, he began to think. He thought about how brands define the world around them and how people turn to brands – or familiar symbols – in times of strife. And then he turned those thoughts into a book. “Somewhere Yes: The Search …

Today’s episode is a replay of an interview from August 2020 with leadership consultant Esther Weinberg, developer of a program called The Ready Zone. Weinberg has more than two decades of experience working with executives to help them evolve their careers – particularly in the entertainment space. Esther, in collaboration with Promax, is getting …

Boulder, Colo.-based agency Human Design lives by the motto “do well by doing good,” and it carries that over to its clients – whether that’s helping SmartWool return to its roots of keeping people warm while they play outside or Land O’ Lakes get the message out that the company is much more than just butter. In today’s episode, Human Design found…

When Black News Channel, now BNC, came to SmithGeiger Group and its in-house creative agency, Vivid Zero, to conduct a top-to-bottom rebrand, much like Dorothy and her ruby slippers everything they needed was there from the start. It just took many hours of meetings and many people staring at design and copy and sketches for the synchronicities to …

For this year’s holiday gift, Troika Media Group sent out a different kind of offering: A non-fungible token, or NFT, created by Venice, Calif.-based artist Claire Salvo. Recipients could quickly and easily sign up for their own crypto wallet on Troika’s marketplace, Redeeem, and then download Salvo’s unique NFT, which is a realistic drawing in pen…

Trollbäck + Company's Elliott Chaffer and Bo Bishop join to discuss ABC's recent rebrand -- why the team made the choices they did, how they evolved the logo to make it function better across today’s many platforms and how and why they tweaked the palette. They also talk about their work with Brooklyn, N.Y.-based music production company YouTooCanW…

Fox Entertainment Music’s new executive vice president, Mamie Coleman, joins the conversation to discuss all things music at Fox-owned FEM, Tubi and Bento Box and how the team uses music to tell stories and drive revenue across all of Fox’s platforms. Part of Coleman’s oversight is turning Fox’s original music into revenue creation. Now that Fox ha…

On September 15, Inspiration4, the first all-civilian mission to space, will blast off in a SpaceX Dragon capsule to spend three days orbiting around the Earth. Creative agency Known worked with mission commander Jared Isaacman and his company, Shift4 Payments, to brand the mission, produce a docuseries for Netflix and lead the marketing. Known Co-…

Since 2005, Robb Wagner, through his creative studio, Stimulated-Inc., has produced high-level creative solutions for global brands such as Disney, ViacomCBS and YouTube, among many others. These solutions include raising the giant head of Peter Dinklage up through a virtual lake for the Spike Scream Awards and creating live music videos in real ti…

When the pandemic hit, Alibi Music was already set up for success. The music production company operates out of different offices across the country and makes its music available for clients via its website, which recently incorporated a powerful search engine into its interface. But the company has not only been able to survive over the past 18 mo…

Creating art that sparks conversations is the driving force behind The Love Project, a non-profit launched by CNBC Marketing VP and Promax Thriver Robert Poulton. In the heated summer of 2020, Poulton took his art to a new level, drawing pictures as a kind of personal therapy fueled by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd as well as by the …

In the past few years, Los Angeles-based brand performance company Troika Media Group has made some big moves. In 2018, it acquired Mission to add to its international public relations and experiential marketing capabilities. In April, it went public. And in May, it acquired fintech platform Redeeem, which will help the company enter the burgeoning…

From crypto to blockchain to minting, Create's Jonathan Gitlin offers a 101 explanation of everything NFT.

About a month ago, music production company Man Made Music announced it was changing its name to Made Music Studio. As part of that move, it released its anti-racism manifesto and launched a partnership with global community disrupter Decolonize Design. The change at Made Music isn’t a facelift, but a wholesale shift within the organization to thin…

Customer experience agency Definition 6 joins the podcast to discuss why all entertainment services need to dive deeply into the world of data-driven performance marketing.

Garen Van de Beek and Lori Shefa worked together for 23 years marketing and promoting hit shows at CBS. When both were leaving the company last spring, they decided they would prefer not to leave each other. So they launched new agency RM 15 (pronounced “room 15”) after the basement office they shared for years at CBS TV City in Los Angeles. Van de…

Linda Ong and Sarah Unger have joined forces to launch Cultique, which will craft custom cultural insights for forward-looking businesses. In this episode, Ong and Unger discuss their vision for the venture, which becomes its own boutique brand under the Civic umbrella.

Allan Gungormez, SVP, strategy, mOcean joins to discuss why the Los Angeles-based creative agency (and three-time Promax Agency of the Year) decided it was necessary to expand its offerings into social and digital strategy.

Michael Vamosy has been on all sides of entertainment marketing, having led teams on the network side at Fox, FX and Starz and on the agency side at Stun. Now he’s launching his own agency, Fathom, in partnership with SmithGeiger. In this conversation, Vamosy chats about his vision for his new agency, what makes it a little different and how he cam…

Leadership expert Esther Weinberg joins to discuss Promax's new leadership program, Promax Next, that she specifically developed to help high-potential managers move to the next level in their careers and to help their teams and organizations do as well.

It’s arguably been a summer of symbols, starting with the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day, rejuvenating the #BlackLivesMatter movement; to watching the simple face mask become the symbol of a nation divided; to seeing iconic but problematic brands, such as Aunt Jemimah, Uncle Ben, the Washington Redskins and several more get pulled from their…

Promax President and CEO joins RevThink's Joel Pilger on the RevThinking podcast to discuss how Promax moved its annual conference online and what that change means for the future of the organization.

Civic Entertainment Group's Linda Ong and Pop'N Creative's Lori Hall join to discuss what brands must do to commit to diversity and inclusion while combating systemic racism.

Civic Entertainment Group Chief Culture Officer Linda Ong returns to discuss the essay she wrote for Medium, titled: "America's Eat the Rich Moment: Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable." In this episode, she deciphers the moment and offers a roadmap on how we can all -- as brands, consumers and human beings -- become allies in the fight fo…

When Kelli Miller and Kendra Eash started Brooklyn-based creative agency And/Or in 2014, they wanted to create a studio where they could practice the kind of creative they craved. And they’ve done that, with packages for FX’s Cake, Quibi’s The Rachel Hollis Show and many more. But as a queer couple as well as business partners, they’ve also doubled…

When five years of preparation and planning went out the window when the pandemic hit, Los Angeles, Dallas and Montreal-based creative studio ATK PLN didn’t panic, they pivoted. With their movie, Scoob!, produced by sister company Reel FX Animation Studios for Warner Bros., now moving to premium video on demand (PVOD) instead of theatrical release,…

Brands that empower their consumers can find it has a positive impact on their business, Fuse Media found in its latest demographic study. In this episode, Fuse Media Head of Marketing Mark McIntire takes on empowerment and brand purpose, topics that are particularly relevant right now. He also discusses why Fuse’s Future History Month and Be Chang…

Josh Norton and Carson Hood, executive creative director and executive producer at New York City-based creative agency Bigstar, discuss what work in entertainment marketing might look like once the pandemic finally passes. Among the topics we discuss: resiliency, flexibility, creativity and innovation, with a dip into silver linings at the end.…

As TV viewers increasingly find themselves out of work, they are looking to pay less for their TV options, said Ben Carlson, senior vice president, general manager of streaming and platforms, MarketCast, in this episode drawn from a recent virtual session. “Previously, people were time-starved and had money to add subscriptions, but what we’re seei…

Film and TV production has been conducted in a certain way with certain structures in place since production began more than 100 years ago. Now with the global pandemic forcing us to question everything we’ve known and done, Becky Morrison, founder of Brooklyn-based boutique production company The Light, is questioning what could change for the bet…

In this episode, drawn from Promax's latest Virtual Session, Lydia Daly, senior vice president, and Mary Kate Cullen, senior director, at Viacom CBS creative strategy and cultural intelligence present a session called #AllTheFeels, which offers some different lenses through which marketers can view and approach the very emotional generation known a…

Tegna’s Meredith Conte summed it up: “A crisis is what local news is made for, and the way our teams have quickly rallied has been nothing short of miraculous and impressive." Fox's John Kukla and Sinclair's Dan Zimmerman joined Conte to discuss the many ways TV stations have had to be agile, yet effective, during the pandemic, in a session present…

Just like all small businesses in this challenging time, creative agencies have quickly had to rejigger their businesses, sending everyone home to work and checking in with all their clients over video calls. In this session, drawn from Promax’s new series of virtual sessions, Promax President and CEO Steve Kazanjian conducts a Q&A with three agenc…

We’re a few weeks into quarantine and the words “new normal” are taking on a new meaning. In today’s episode, which was originally recorded on Thursday, April 2, leadership expert Cecilia Gorman of Creative + Talent + Partners joins Promax’s new series of Virtual Sessions to help provide us with a mental reset. Cecilia talks about three major topic…

Sure, everyone can retreat to their homes with a computer and do work. But that’s just one piece of the working-from-home puzzle, especially when in the course of just days, entire teams suddenly found themselves working fully remotely. And in the case of television marketers tasked with keeping creative front and center in this challenging time, t…

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted an indefinite hiatus for live sports, forcing sports marketers to get creative with their strategies with no new content to market. It’s a challenge they’re slowly adapting to and, in fact, may have a long-term effect on how sports are marketed in the future. In this session, Carrie Brzezinski-Hsu, vice preside…

For team leaders and managers, the transition to working from home is about more than just shifting your workplace, it’s also about shifting your mindset. And since none of us have dealt with a global pandemic that required nationwide self-quarantining, everyone is figuring out how best to do it as we go along. That holds true for leadership expert…

Civic Entertainment Chief Culture Officer Linda Ong is back to tell us about five consumer trends she sees emerging once coronavirus is finally behind us. Tune in to hear about The Accelerant Effect, The New Normal, The New Homesteader, Revenge Behavior and the Rise of WFH Wear. Ong will get you dreaming about what life will be like once things fin…

After more than two decades as a creative marketing studio, Stun in February announced that together with brand strategist Blackbird it had been acquired by Schireson Associates to form a new marketing firm: Known. In this episode, Known Studio Presidents Mark Feldstein and Brad Roth join to talk about the merger and how seamlessly it folds data, a…

When it came time to promote CNN's timely docuseries The Windsors, New York-based creative agency Loyalkaspar turned to one of the Queen's favorite things: corgis! In an adorable spot, a team of five friendly pups leads the way from a private jet down the red carpet, presumably making way for the Queen. In this episode, Loyalkaspar Creative Directo…

To provide clients with your best help and advice, sometimes you have to move outside of your comfort zone and act as a counselor, consultant, soothsayer and trusted friend. In this episode, DixonBaxi Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director Aporva Baxi chats about all the ways he talks brand with clients in today's new world of always-on enterta…

There’s a lot more that goes into a rebrand than just redesigning the logo. In fact, that’s just the starting point. That’s the topic of conversation between Nathaniel Howe, founder and creative director at Nathaniel Howe Studios, and Promax Editorial Director Paige Albiniak (and occasionally her dog, sorry about that) in this episode. Howe discuss…