From ‘Bridgerton’ to ‘Call of Duty’ Variety Names Culture Catalysts

Variety’s 2024 Culture Catalysts Impact report includes the people behind memorable activations from “Bridgerton,” marketers keeping “Call of Duty” high on the lists of gamers and the movers and shakers behind some of the biggest-grossing movies and buzzed-about series of the year. The third annual Variety Culture Catalysts Dinner presented by TikTok will take place Oct. 15. The event will feature intimate conversations with the executives behind the year’s most talked-about titles.

Dea Lawrence, chief operating and marketing officer at Variety, says. “Our third annual Cultural Catalysts Dinner is sure to drive the conversation forward on entertainment marketing while the inaugural Gaming on TikTok Summit will provide invaluable thought leadership for those at the crossroads of video games, entertainment and content.”

FILM AND TV

ABC
Shannon Ryan
President, marketing, Disney Entertainment Television
Erin Weir
Exec VP, marketing, ABC & Disney Entertainment Television
Aaron Goldman
Exec VP, creative marketing, Disney Entertainment Television

The ABC team took to the streets to hype Season 3 of “Abbott Elementary” with a vehicle modified to look like a lunch box, delivering goodie bags to teachers in 18 states. “Not only was it an incredible driving billboard for us across the country, but also giving back to teachers has really been the foundation of our ‘Abbott’ marketing from Season 1,” says Weir. For “The Golden Bachelor,” they also did real-world activations (e.g, turning the seats of the Hollywood Bowl gold), but their primary focus was targeting the show’s more mature demographic with over 200 screenings in retirement communities and partnerships with more than 30 brands on senior discounts.

Hulu
Brittany Mehciz
VP, marketing social & brand

Going into Season 5 of “The Kardashians,” Hulu knew what worked to promote the show. “We’ve found that simple clips with strong sound potential for UGC perform best so that was one area we scaled,” says Mehciz, whose marketing team worked with over 280 creators on 33 different influencer campaigns across its campaigns in this year alone. Similarly, they prepped for Season 4 of “Only Murders in the Building” by stocking up on another proven promotional winner, behind-the-scenes clips. “We also lean on our paid social campaigns to find additional untapped audiences or first-to-market ad products that can help these returning shows keep finding new viewers,” she says.

HBO/Max
Zach Enterlin
Exec VP, brand, content & creative, streaming marketing
Pia Barlow
Exec VP, originals marketing, HBO and Max
Anthony Mauro
VP of marketing AV, HBO and Max
Mark Doumet
Senior director, HBO and Max Originals Marketing
Michael Hagos
Senior director, creative marketing, HBO Originals

To promote Season 2 of “House of the Dragon,” the HBO/Max team launched a “Raise Your Banner” campaign that had fans, digital influencers, sports teams and other institutions signal their allegiance to one of the show’s fictional dueling factions. They released videos of landmarks around the world (including Paris’ Eiffel Tower) sporting green or black CGI banners, and raised real banners on a variety of New York City landmarks, including Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Terminal. The campaign’s coup de grace was a 270-inflatable dragon coiled around the Empire State Building. “Our goal was to infiltrate popular culture and make sure that ‘House of the Dragon’ felt like the must-watch event of the season,” says Doumet.

Lionsgate
Dani Otero
Exec VP, global paid media & analytics

Otero and her team generated big buzz for the Lionsgate prequel “The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” with a cross-platform activation in New York’s Time Square featuring an 80-person choir singing the song “The Hanging Tree” from the original quadrilogy, an interactive billboard directing people to the movie’s TikTok channel and, as a last-minute addition, live appearances by cast members Tom Blythe and Rachel Zegler. “It was originally set up with the strike in mind, but about 24 or 48 hours before the event, we were able to put an interim agreement in place with SAG, which allowed us to bring in talent,” Otero says.

Neon
Christian Parkes
Chief marketing officer

Nicolas Cage plays the title role in “Longlegs,” and having his name attached to the project was undoubtedly key to it getting greenlit. But when it came time to sell the movie to audiences, his serial killer character was literally pushed into the shadows in trailers and slowly teased into view. “Every time that we showed him, it was from behind or you just saw his eyes or mouth,” explains Parkes. “We were letting a little bit of air out of the balloon all the way along. but if you really wanted to experience it, you had to go to the theater and see it.”

Netflix
Shelly Gillyard
VP, marketing, U.S. & Canada
Josh Simon
VP, consumer products and live experiences
Maya Brooks
Senior director, publicity, U.S. & Canada

After two seasons working under COVID restrictions, Netflix was eager to take Season 3 of “Bridgerton” into the real world with live activations such as “The Queen’s Ball,” staged in 11 cities from Los Angeles to Melbourne, and a global press tour. It also engaged fans online with TikTok and Instagram filters and partnered with lifestyle brands including Bath & Body Works, Williams Sonoma and Allure Bridal. “We created a collection for every taste so that fans can feel the romanticism of ‘Bridgerton’ in their everyday lives,” says Simon, who, along with rest of the team, promoted a slate that also included “Emily in Paris,” “Three Body Problem,” “Hit Man,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Atlas” and “Unfrosted.”

Paramount
Tamar Teifeld
Senior VP, digital marketing
Evan Fisk
VP, digital marketing
Brandon Nichols
VP, digital marketing

To kick start the campaign for its movie adaptation of the “Mean Girls” musical, the Paramount team posted the original non-musical 2004 film in its entirety on TikTok for 24 hours. “We had over 60 brand accounts share and talk about it organically, and that really put us in a great place for the trailer launch,” says Teifeld. Both it and the biopic “Bob Marley One Love” were bolstered by on-site activations at TikTok’s inaugural In the Mix music fest in December 2023. With the latter movie, one of the primary goals was to “remind younger people that these songs you hear on your summer playlist are actually Bob Marley,” she says.

Universal
Sam Bergen 
CMO, Illumination (“Despicable Me 4”)
David O’Connor 
President of Franchise Management and Brand Management, UFEG
Mike Vollman 
EVP, Marketing DreamWorks Animation 
Claire-Marie Murphy
SVP Creative & Strategy, UFEG
Suzanne Cole 
EVP, Media Advertising, UFEG
Thomas Beatty 
EVP, Creative Strategy & Research, UFEG

Kids and family content has long been a powerhouse cornerstone of Universal’s portfolio strategy in film. The unprecedented success of the studio and Illumination’s “Super Mario Bros.” in 2023 was a hard act to follow, but the Donna Langley-led operation made waves with innovative campaigns for “Kung Fu Panda 4” and “Despicable Me 4.” 

Regarded as the highest-grossing animated film franchise ever, “Despicable” earned a vaunted place in the hearts of Gen Z after the viral “Gentleminions” trend — which saw thousands of young men turn up in force at theaters dressed in suits tied to the 2022’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru.” For the latest installment, which grossed nearly $950 million worldwide, they went back to the viral well with Serbian basketball player Nikola Jovic. The internet named him a doppelganger for Gru, the lead character voiced by Steve Carrel, and landed him for a TV spot with the Minions. 

“We set the bar very high with the ‘Despicable Me’ films. Our goal was to be pervasive and unmissable. Whether it was creating custom spots for the Super Bowl and Olympics, or partnering with the biggest global brands, we wanted to be everywhere while also channeling the fun and irreverence of what makes the Minions and ‘Despicable Me’ characters so special,” says O’Connor.

At DreamWorks Animation, key programming in the digital space came from Roblox — the UGC gaming platform that snags billions of impressions from kids and young adults. The team also targeted unexpected verticals like wellness (which may well have promoted the movie to older demos) on YouTube, hosting  a four-hour guided meditation and breath work class with the titular Panda, Po. Over 600,000 people tuned in. 

“It had been eight years since we last saw Jack Black as ‘Po’ on the big screen, which meant we had an opportunity to engage both nostalgic and new audiences.  Whether it was Roblox to reach kids, TikTok to reach Gen Z or our NBCUniversal ecosystem to reach families, we relied on an arsenal of tactics to make ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ a moviegoing event for all audiences,” says Dwight Caines, president, domestic marketing, Universal Pictures.

Peacock
Shannon Willet
Chief marketing officer

Season 6 of Peacock’s reality competition show “Love Island” dropped a whopping six episodes a week. “You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in the show or what people are going to get excited about, so it keeps you on your toes,” says Willet, whose team also helped “The Traitors” to an Emmy win. That meant having people on-set at all times, capturing content in real time and feeding it back to her team so they could pinpoint any potentially buzzy moments and release them on their socials, then amplify anything that gained traction, such as memes highlighting overall-clad contestant Robert Rausch’s similarity to another NBCU asset, the Minion character Kevin.

Sony Pictures Entertainment
Danielle Misher
Co-head, global theatrical marketing
Stefanie Napoli
Exec VP, global media, branded content & promotions
Rose Phillips
Senior VP, global digital marketing, social media

The SPE marketing team on “Anyone But You” got a strong assist from the film’s two stars, Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, the latter of whom exec produced the movie. The duo brainstormed with the SPE team prior to principal photography, recorded a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage during the Australian shoot and collaborated on a series of TikTok videos, including a clip of them doing ASMR pick-up lines that garnered over 24.4 million views. “They had great chemistry and we just wanted the audience to feel that so that you wanted to go spend a couple hours in the theater with them,” says Misher.

The Walt Disney Studios
Jess Intihar
Exec VP, digital marketing
Jason Eskin
VP, digital marketing
Sheila Sluk
Senior VP, media planning & strategy
Jess Gray
VP, media

For “Inside Out 2,” the Disney marketing team targeted Millennial and Gen-Z audiences with a campaign carefully crafted to emphasize its underlying themes. “We were very rigorous about staying on message about what this film has to say about what it means to grow up,” says Eskin. They created custom digital content featuring the film’s nine emotions (e.g., a clip of them posing for a group selfie), along with Snapchat and TikTok lenses and filters and an “Inside Out” in-game experience in Fortnite. They also took the campaign out into the real world with “need a lift?” billboards and “emotional baggage” airport signage, and appearances by “Inside Out” costumed characters at theater meet & greets.

Warner Bros. Discovery

“Dune 2”
Lauren Menno
VP, global talent and influencers/global digital marketing
Cortney Lawson
Senior VP, global publicity
Meggie Coates
VP, global digital marketing
John Stanford
Exec VP, creative advertising

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
Susannah Scott
Exec VP, brand strategy, integrated planning & franchise
Mara Maxfield
VP, global brand partnerships
Chad Love
VP, global media
Matt Stein
Director, global digital marketing

The first installment of “Dune” premiered in the midst of the pandemic, limiting promotional appearances, so when it came time to promote the release of “Dune: Part 2,” Warner Bros. Discovery made a point to capture the cast at premieres and other events, sporting eye-catching fashions and answering questions from fans and journalists alike, and share the results on TikTok. “You felt like they were very active on social media, but they were not posting themselves,” says Coates. “It was all coming from the account for the film.” The team behind “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” also got enthusiastic promotional participation from its cast, along with a long list of brand partners ranging from Progressive Insurance to Fanta soda, as well as a boost from its immersive “Afterlife Experience” in Hollywood. “It opened about two weeks ahead of the movie and allowed us to do a lot of earned media opportunities with influencers,” says Scott.

GAMES

2K
Zak Armitage
GM of NBA 2K at 2K

Armitage and his 2K team got some major media exposure for “NBA 2K25” when star player Jayson Tatum appeared on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon,” rhapsodizing about appearing on the game’s cover. But their primary focus was finding ways to inspire gaming influencers to make their own “NBA 2K25” content, like inviting more than 100 of them to preview the game at the Basketball Hall of Fame. “It’s our job to make the best game in the industry and facilitate those kinds of interactions with creators, and then it’s over to them to create the content and the community to engage with it,” says Armitage.

Activision
Tyler Bahl
Senior VP & global head of marketing

Bahl and his Activision team created a pre-release buzz for “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” with its “The Truth Lies” campaign. It featured a website and a series of cryptic trailers with a grungy vintage tech aesthetic befitting the game’s 1991 setting, alluding to vast government conspiracies, along with a fake news van with “In Lies We Trust” spray painted on its side roaming New York City and ads in the New York Post and USA Today that appeared to be front page stories about the defacing of a national monument. “They were actually sending reporters up to Mt. Rushmore to see if we really put blindfolds on the presidents,” says Bahl.

Electronic Arts
David Tinson
Chief marketing officer

Tinson and his EA team focus on community-driven marketing. For “EA Sports College Football 25,” it meant pitting content creators against each other in a “Gameday Showcase” on Twitch. With the “Madden NFL 24,” it’s epitomized by “The Madden Cruiser,” a customized bus with live broadcast capabilities and five gaming stations, among other amenities, that’s visiting stadiums around the country on game day throughout the 2024-2025 season. “For both of these opportunities, the reaction from our fans was overwhelmingly positive, so we feel like we’ve figured out an approach that really works, and it has been cool to see it come together,” says Tinson.

Epic
Adam Sussman
President

In December 2023, Epic celebrated the launch of three new modes for its online game Fortnite (Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival) with “The Big Bang,” a virtual event featuring an appearance by rapper Eminem in avatar form that attracted 6.38 million viewers on Twitch, setting a single-day record for the platform. In the months since, they’ve continued to stoke fan interest with bespoke Fortnite environments for everything from “Star Wars” to the Coachella music festival, artist integrations with the Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Metallica, and an announcement of its $1.5 billion strategic partnership with Disney at D23 that was livestreamed inside Fortnite to 1.3 million players.

Nintendo
Devon Pritchard
Exec VP, marketing, sales & communications

Pritchard and the Nintendo marketing team played the long game with their campaign for “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” the latest in a franchise launched back in 1986. They released the first teaser trailer for the then-untitled open-world fantasy adventure back in 2019. As its 2023 release approached, they stoked consumer interest with fan art and cosplay contests, digital influencer collabs and limited edition merch, as well as pop-up stores in several cities and a companion smartphone app. Their efforts paid off: As of June 2024, the videogame (exclusive to Nintendo’s Switch platform) has sold more than 20.8 million copies.

Sony Interactive Entertainment
Eric Lempel
Senior VP, head of marketing, sales and business operations

For “Spider-Man 2,” Lempel and his Sony Interactive marketing team designed a campaign as high profile as the game’s skyscraper-swinging hero, employing wraps on subway trains, big brand partnerships (Adidas, Warby Parker) and activations in 20 countries, including takeovers of Times Square in New York and the Sphere in Las Vegas. They went more low-key with “Helldivers 2,” focusing on an online strategy highlighted by a livestream event that scored 26 million views and supplemented by merch like hoodies and t-shirts sporting fan-favorite catchphrases. “We thought the ‘Helldivers 2’ community is perfect for that type of ‘if you know, you know’ approach to licensed merchandise,” says Lempel.

Square Enix
John Heinecke
Chief publishing officer

“Final Fantasy XVI” and “Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth” marked the first time that Square Enix released two numbered titles within the span of a year, “so our marketing campaigns had to really differentiate between the two while still holding them glued to what is ‘Final Fantasy,’” says Heinecke. They accomplished this with timed trailer drops starting three and a half years before their releases, partnerships with thousands of gaming influencers big and small, convention appearances by voice actors Ben Starr, Cody Christian and Matt Mercer, and a live performance of the song “No Promises to Keep” from “Rebirth” by Loren Allred at The Game Awards.

WB Games

WB Games bested all competitors in 2023 by selling more than 22 million copies of its Harry Potter prequel role-playing game “Hogwarts Legacy.” But the comparatively low sales for “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,” which hit the market in January, led to a 41% drop in revenue year-over-year in Q1. Its free-to-play mobile game “Mortal Kombat: Onslaught,” released in October 2023, also performed below expectations, and in July it was announced it would be shut down. Amidst this bad news, WB Games hired Melissa Bell away from competitor 2K (“NBA 2K,” “BioShock”) to be its new marketing chief in May.