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Lionsgate announces new marketing leader (Score 63)

president. Liston is replacing Damon Wolf and will lead marketing for upcoming movies such as "The Protege," "American Underdog" and "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." Lionsgate brought Liston in as executive VP of earned media and communications in 2019. In that role she ran PR campaigns for "John Wick 3," "Knives Out" and "Bombshell." Liston served as executive VP of domestic publicity at Sony Pictures before joining Lionsgate. Keep an eye on this company as this promotion will affect the marketing strategy and could lead to agency reviews. 

According to Pathmatics, Lionsgate earned 997m impressions YTD through Instagram ads placed directly onto instagram.com. It spent around $7m on digital display ads YTD, a massive increase from $197.5k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend skyrocketed from $74.1k in 2019 to $6.7m in 2020. 

Per iSpot, Lionsgate spent around $14.7m on national TV ads YTD, a significant jump from $2.9m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend plummeted from $130.1m in 2019 to $3.3m in 2020. This year, it placed ads during programming such as "NBA Basketball," "The Bachelor," "The Voice," "SportsCenter" and "2020 Tokyo Olympics." 

Sellers-- Lionsgate has a broad target audience, but I believe it is primarily trying to reach Gen-Zers and millennials. So far this year, it placed all of its digital ads directly onto Instagram, which is very popular among these demographics. The company seems to be moving to a digital-first marketing strategy, considering it is now spending more on digital ads than it did before the pandemic. National TV spend is still way down compared to before the pandemic, and it may never go back to spending huge sums of cash in that channel. It also utilizes OOH, print, radio and local broadcast TV ads, per Kantar. Sellers should start reaching out to offer ad space as Lionsgate has several new films that it will be promoting. 

Agency & martech readers-- Promoted marketing leaders are much less likely than outside hires to conduct agency reviews. However, you should still reach out to Lionsgate just in case Liston decides to make any changes. I believe you will face competition from Starcom Worldwide (media buying & planning).