With the entertainment industry evolving, Promax is making changes designed to broaden its community and be more valuable to its members.
The group, made up of entertainment marketers, is starting units designed to serve professionals in the digital and theatrical fields.
Promax is also launching a Transition Assistance Program that helps members find jobs in the growing areas of streaming, over-the-top, and direct-to-consumer as consolidation and technology eliminate traditional media positions.. The first TAP workshop is being held Feb. 22 in Los Angeles.
In addition to TAP, the group is offering members PromaxConnect where members can network and share experiences and work they’ve done, and has created PromaxDirect, which provides for member customized workshops that address specific marketing challenges with the group’s expertise.
The association, led by CEO Steve Kazanjian is wrapping these changes is a new slogan, “We Love What You Do,” which is being unveiled in time for Valentine’s Day.
“The idea is to stake a claim in what we’re calling the entertainment marketing community,” Kazanjian said. Promax has been around since 1956, a year after primetime was established in 1955.
For the group’s members, the current industry atmosphere is a lot like it was in the 80s and 90s when a lot of jobs moved from broadcast to cable, he said.
“As our members are moving into gaming, into theatrical, into digital, into social, and all these other places, it becomes more critical than ever before to make sure that the home that we’re building is inclusive of all of that,” he said.
Kazanjian said that Promax’s membership over the past five year has been relatively stable at about 10,000 people. Attendance for the group’s June conference has also been stable at about 2,300 people and its Station Summit event has been growing and now attracts between 1,100 and 1,200 people.
But the association felt the need to counter the gloom and doom malaise over much of the industry as it frets about consolidation.
“The reality is there’s never been a better time to work in this industry,” Kazanjian said.”There’s s more money being poured into this industry than ever before, but just in really different places, right? And we as a community, are the tastemakers and the marketers who are going to bring this industry forward to the next evolution.”
That partly the reasoning behind the upbeat branding, created by Loyalkaspar and Man Made Music under the direction of Promax marketing head Jennifer Ball.
“We love what we do. That’s what’s driving us,” Kazanjian said. “The distribution vehicle may have changed but at the end of the day we still love what we do.”
Promax’s new direction comes at the end of a 18 month process, that included a deep-divan analysis into the behavior of its member. The conclusion was that the group needed to transition from having a few tentpole events to having programs available to members nearly year round.
‘When our member are faced with that next challenge, the first place they’re going to go it Promax to find that solution,” he said.
Kazanjian noted that over the next five year, the association’s membership will undergoing a change from Gen Xers to millennials. “As a result, our members want information now. On demand. At the time of their choosing, based on an immediate job need and they don’t have the luxury to wait for another June conference,” he said.,
From its event, Promax has video of top people in the field addressing the industry’s more pressing issues. It is taking those hundreds of hours and cutting its segments and putting them into content management systems that are searchable to make the findable.
On top of that, it is organizing a Community Center, where members can discuss issues and get answers to their questions.
“I do believe it’s an extraordinary time in the history of Promax,” Kazanjian said. We’re onlining more events, conferences and programs concurrently than I think we have any time in recent memory, And I do think that we are responding incredibly well to the dynamic nature of the industry and where we’re collectively going,”
