Paramount plays the hits in ‘popular’ new brand campaign

Paramount wants consumers to know it’s popular. Really popular.

The company, led by CEO Bob Bakish, is rolling out a new corporate branding campaign Wednesday with the slogan “Popular is Paramount.” The campaign aims to highlight some of the media and entertainment giant’s content.

Anchored in research-backed insights, the campaign vividly captures the essence of Popular with striking statements of content leadership across genres and formats. It also uses the Paramount stars (which normally circle the mountain in the center of the company’s logo) to create a kind of halo around main characters.

One of the content used in the campaign is Paramount Network smash Yellowstone (“Popular is the most watched program on TV,” says the tagline, for a cowboy hat-clad Kevin Costner); like Top gun: Maverick (“Popular is the biggest movie in America in 2022,” blares the tagline, with Tom Cruise in full flight suit). Other programs featured in the campaign include NFL football, Paw patroland the Star Trek franchise.

“‘Popular is Paramount’ is a celebration of our company, content and creative excellence,” Bakish said in a statement. “It simply reflects what we do best: giving audiences what they want, with smart strategies that maximize the reach and power of our unified portfolio to successfully commercialize and deploy IP at scale around the world. distribute. Our content engine is driving tremendous and undeniable momentum, underlining our ability to produce major mass-market hits across all genres, demographics, formats and platforms.”

The marketing and branding campaign will run on Paramount-owned platforms (think Paramount+, CBS, Comedy Central, etc.) and other paid media outlets. It will also feature billboards in Los Angeles and New York. The campaign will run throughout the summer.

Paramount may not have the scale in streaming that Netflix or Disney has, but it has tried to carve out a different niche from those competitors. In September, Bakish, speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, was asked about a deal to give Walmart+ subscribers free Paramount+ subscriptions, a pool of millions of potential subscribers.

“I think everyone wanted that deal,” Bakish said of the Walmart partnership, adding that Walmart chose Paramount because CEO Doug McMillon said “we’re like them.”

“Look at our content, we’re not a coastal company, we haven’t won many Emmys, we represent the masses,” said Bakish. “They thought our content was a very good fit for them.”

With the new campaign, that perspective is now central.

“We are experts at telling stories that resonate with any audience, anywhere, and ‘Popular’ is a distinctive identity that connects our legacy to our future,” added Julia Phelps, Paramount’s CMO and head of communications.