Paramount Advertising President John Halley was preparing to preside over an upfront pitch to Publicis, one of the four major holding companies in the ad business, when big news crossed the wire.
Bob Bakish was officially out as CEO of Paramount Global. Much of the reason that the 27-year company veteran lost favor with board members and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone had to do with intensifying merger talks, which have also kept Paramount in the headlines. A couple of hours before the Publicis dinner, Paramount capped its newsy day by conducting a 9-minute earnings call and declining to field any questions from Wall Street analysts.
“It’s not my favorite backdrop,” Halley dryly conceded in an interview with Deadline. “I thought, ‘Is this going to derail our messaging?’ And we got into the room and it was very clear immediately that that was background and not foreground. We acknowledged it, we moved on. … But the fact is, we’ve got a story to tell. That’s what our partners and clients want to hear.”
Halley said the new strategic approach to upfront selling, which he instituted in 2023, has provided a boost despite – or, in a weird way, because of – the corporate drama. In place of a single upfront presentation, long the tradition in the media business (and none was bigger than the Carnegie Hall events staged by CBS and, in 2022 by its new parent, Paramount), the company now convenes more intimate gatherings. This year, it is hosting seven dinner events in New York as well as presentations in LA and Chicago.
Significant talent, while not walking a unified red carpet or doing the ensemble walk-and-waves of a conventional show, still shows up in force. Halley said the roster has included Billy Bob Thornton, Sylvester Stallone, Nicole Kidman, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore, Stephen Colbert and Jon Hamm.
The uncertainty around Paramount’s future “in no way got in the way of what we were trying to accomplish,” Halley emphasized. “Whatever happens, it’s going to take place over a very long period of time outside of this planning period. There’s not an impact on the asset base. … There’s a refreshing practicality to it all.”
In addition to not having to devote resources on one event, the more decentralized approach puts the company into the marketplace earlier than the week of May 13, when media and tech companies are making their consolidated pitches. While the actual returns won’t be known for at least the next few weeks, Halley said the new setup “is such a home run for us. It works so much better than the traditional presentation. I look at the [upfront] week and it just feels more anachronistic than ever to me.” The ad group, he continued, has received “unanimous feedback that it’s a better format. No one has said they wish it were being done the old way.”
While a lot of the coverage of late about Paramount Global has focused on its shortcomings (and there are some of those), the company also comes into the upfront with momentum in some areas. Its Super Bowl broadcast last February shattered ratings records and also showed the streaming capabilities of Paramount+. For the 16th straight season, CBS is the most-watched broadcast network. Across its linear and digital portfolio, Paramount claims 260 million monthly viewers and a deduplicated audience of 200 million.
“It’s quite refreshing coming out of the strike,” Halley said. “The strike really was debilitating for everyone.” Then again, he noted, “we looked like geniuses last year” by not staging a traditional upfront. After the WGA walked out and began demonstrating on May 2 last year, NewFronts and upfronts became highly visible targets of picketers, and talent dropped out of sight due to the optics. Paramount was able to shuttle talent in and out of a set of dinners that had concluded by the time of the walkout.
Halley sees the macroeconomic environment improving. “Everything is better this year than it was last year,” he said. “We’re still in the epilogue of the pandemic, believe it or not.” In addition to the hangover from Covid, he cited supply-chain issues, interest rate hikes, inflation, recession fears and global conflict, arguing that each has moderated, which should help advertising grow again.
In addition to changing the trappings of upfronts, Halley, who came up through the tech-forward ad ranks at Viacom, sees a lot of changes taking effect in terms of the season’s impact.
“As the business becomes more streaming-oriented, the influence of the upfront on your total results is becoming less and less,” he said. “In the old days, you think about a broadcast network that sold 75% of its inventory in the upfront, the upfront would basically be a strong signal about the year ahead. It’s just kind of less and less.”
As far as Paramount’s corporate ups and downs, Halley said, “From an outsider’s perspective, you go, ‘Wow, that seems like really unfortunate timing.’ It would have been way worse if it was three weeks later, when we weren’t in front of our clients.”
Addressing the crowd at the Publicis dinner, Halley recalled telling them, “‘We’re never going to forget this.’” With a sly nod to Paramount’s treasured The Godfather, he added, “The media business: This is the life we chose, I guess.”
The post Paramount Ad Chief John Halley Embraces The “Refreshing Practicality” Of Pitching Upfront Buyers As Corporate Intrigue Swirls appeared first on Deadline.
