Sony's Marketing President Pays For A Summer of Flops
There's a marketing shakeup happening in the wake of a bad summer.
Marc Weinstock, the president of worldwide marketing at Sony Pictures, has been kicked to the curb after a summer that included big-budget disappointments like After Earth and White House Down. In fact, the non-hits just keep coming with the weekend box office disaster that was the latest Sony release Battle of the Year starring Chris Brown, which only brought in $4.6 million.
The marketing department is undergoing some major changes with 12-year vet, Steve Elzer, stepping down from his role as SVP of media relations just last week.
“When box office returns fall short, it’s marketing executives that are often the first to be blamed, and Weinstock is the second marketing chief to be shown the door in less than two months after a summer that saw almost as many misses as hits,” The Hollywood Reporter says.
With all this in mind, it seems unlikely that the company would promote from within. THR proposes that if they went that route, they would choose the president of worldwide digital marketing, Dwight Caines.
But the company has already looked outwards. Just a few weeks ago, they brought in Charles Sipkins from Sard Verbinnen, a crisis expert, to fill the head of comms role. Not only does he have experience with difficult situations, he has a history with Daniel Loeb, an activist investor from the hedge fund Third Point who has criticized Sony’s entertainment business for being “poorly managed.”
We took a quick look at the lineup for the coming months and there’s hope that things will get better. They’ve got The Monuments Men with George Clooney and Matt Damon (gold), the Carrie remake with Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore (scary), Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks (adventure and suspense), and American Hustle with Bradley Cooper (in a perm) and Christian Bale (in a comb over).
Note: No Chris Brown.
