Disney Unifies Marketing and PR Divisions With Key Promotions – The Hollywood Reporter

Disney is unifying a few of its advertising and PR divisions in a bid to higher break down silos throughout the firm.
In a memo to employees Wednesday, Shannon Ryan, president of content material advertising for Hulu and normal leisure, revealed a reorganization inside her group to additional its content-first method as a way to create a extra holistic workforce.

Naomi Bulochnikov, Erin Weir, Barrie Gruner in addition to Aaron Goldman and Spencer Peeples have all been promoted and will tackle new duties, persevering with to report back to Ryan.
Bulochnikov, the previous Freeform PR boss who moved to the highest function at ABC in late 2019, will proceed to guide communications for the community’s leisure division and will add oversight of ABC News, Disney Television Studios (together with ABC Signature and twentieth Television), Freeform and syndication to her purview. Teams at every respective division will now report back to Bulochnikov. The transfer reunites Bulochnikov with Karey Burke, the previous Freeform head of originals who was promoted to ABC Entertainment president and, final 12 months, moved to supervise twentieth Television. Bulochnikov will now work immediately with each Burke and Craig Erwich, who continues to supervise Hulu in addition to ABC Entertainment.

Goldman, who leads ABC Entertainment’s artistic technique, may even oversee a artistic heart of excellence for all manufacturers. Weir will proceed to supervise marketing campaign planning for ABC Entertainment and add Disney TV Studios, ABC News and syndication. Gruner will stay the lead of promoting and PR for Hulu originals and the just lately launched Onyx Collective.
“This new construction will enable us to interrupt down silos so we are able to higher help our groups and huge content material portfolio,” Ryan wrote in her memo (learn it in full, beneath). “By unifying the advertising and PR areas throughout all of our nice manufacturers, we’ll set up readability for our group, foster better collaboration and create much more alternatives for all of us to succeed.”
The strikes come almost a 12 months after Peter Rice restructured Disney’s normal leisure division and moved from its longtime legacy construction in favor of making centralized teams which might be as a substitute targeted on content material. That signifies that departments together with advertising, publicity, scheduling and media planning are being consolidated into three distinct teams overseen by Shannon Ryan (Hulu and linear networks), former Twitter head of worldwide artistic Jayanta Jenkins (Disney+) and Stephanie Gibbons (FX/FX on Hulu).

Here’s Ryan’s memo to employees:
Dear Team, 
First and foremost, I wished to share how grateful I’m to all of you on your collective spirit, resilience and perseverance over the previous 19 months. Your dedication to not simply your work, but in addition to one another, over the course of a lot disruption in our trade, has been astounding to see. As we glance to our future and proceed to construct on our unimaginable momentum, we are actually taking the subsequent step to convey our company into focus, furthering our content-first enterprise method, and leveraging our collective experience to market all of our programming extra holistically. This new construction will enable us to interrupt down silos so we are able to higher help our groups and huge content material portfolio. By unifying the advertising and PR areas throughout all of our nice manufacturers, we’ll set up readability for our group, foster better collaboration and create much more alternatives for all of us to succeed.
Here is how we’re evolving our group: 
Naomi Bulochnikov, SVP, Communications & Publicity, ABC & General Entertainment, will proceed to guide Communications, Publicity, and Events for ABC Entertainment, and will add ABC News, Disney Television Studios, Freeform and Syndication to her purview. She will work carefully with management and company communications on technique and messaging. In addition to her ABC workforce, Chris Alexander, Van Scott, Kim Harbin, and Kristen Andersen and their groups will now report back to Naomi.
Aaron Goldman, EVP, Creative Marketing, ABC & General Entertainment, will proceed to guide ABC Entertainment’s Creative, together with Creative Strategy, On and Off-Air Design, Marketing Production, and A/V Creative. Additionally, Aaron will lead a Creative Center of Excellence (COE) for all manufacturers inside our company. At ABC, Jill Gershman will now report back to Aaron immediately, as will Melissa King who will probably be getting into Aaron’s earlier function. The artistic groups inside ABC News, Freeform, Hulu Originals, and Onyx will report dotted line to Aaron as a part of the COE.
Erin Weir, EVP, Marketing, ABC & General Entertainment, will proceed to guide Campaign Planning and Strategy, Experiential, Digital, and Owned Assets for ABC Entertainment and will now additionally add Disney Television Studios, ABC News, and Syndication to her oversight. In addition to her present ABC workforce, Steven Melnick, Alan Ives, and Tom Connor and their groups will be a part of her group. 
Barrie Gruner, EVP, Hulu Originals Marketing & Publicity, will lead Marketing and Publicity for Hulu Originals and Onyx Collective, together with Strategy, Campaign Management, Communications, Creative, Media, Social, Events and Talent Relations. Spencer Peeples, SVP, Hulu Originals Marketing & Awards, will report into Barrie alongside together with his workforce. He may even lead an Awards Center of Excellence (COE) for all content material manufacturers in our portfolio. The Awards leads throughout all manufacturers will report dotted line into Spencer.

Joe Ortiz, SVP, Marketing, Freeform will proceed to guide all Marketing and Strategy for Freeform, together with Creative, On and Off-Air Design, Digital, Experiential, and Owned Assets.
 Kristen Graham, SVP, Talent Relations, and her workforce will proceed main Talent Relations for ABC Entertainment.
Please be a part of me in congratulating Naomi, Aaron, Erin, Barrie and Spencer on their newly expanded roles. I’ve had the privilege of working very carefully with these distinctive and considerate leaders, and know they’ll proceed to foster an surroundings that may allow all of you to thrive, suppose massive and do your greatest work ever. In the approaching weeks, they are going to be reaching out to work with you on any pertinent subsequent steps and transition plans.
We have already achieved a lot: Hulu Originals is having one of the best 12 months in its historical past with Nine Perfect Strangers as our most watched drama, Only Murders within the Building as our most watched comedy, and The D’Amelio Show as our most watched unscripted sequence; ABC has been the #1 leisure community for the previous two consecutive seasons – for the primary time in 25 years; ABC News out-performed its rivals on all packages and platforms final season, and was answerable for the #1 morning present (GMA), #1 Daytime Talk Show (The View), Friday’s #1 News Magazine (20/20) and the #1 Evening Newscast (World News Tonight with David Muir); Freeform at the moment ranks because the #1 cable community in leisure this fall; and Disney Television Studios produces the #1 scripted sequence on 10 platforms. 
I hope you might be all as proud as I’m on a regular basis of those unimaginable accomplishments – they’re nothing in need of extraordinary. And I’m assured that this new construction will give us the chance to extend our energy by permitting us to work extra carefully collectively throughout our company.
I’m excited and energized to start out this transformational subsequent chapter with essentially the most spectacular advertising and communications workforce within the enterprise. Thank you a lot on your dedication. I’m so proud to be a part of this stellar group, so appreciative to be working alongside all of you each step of the way in which and I can’t wait to see what all of us do subsequent! 
Please be happy to succeed in out to your supervisor or HR enterprise companion with any questions, and I’m right here in case you want something in any respect.
With gratitude, 
Shannon

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/television/tv-news/disney-unifies-marketing-and-pr-divisions-with-key-promotions-1235037941/