During the months-long Hollywood strikes, each the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have managed to win the courtroom of public opinion pretty simply. Studio heads like David Zaslav and Bob Iger made headlines for sticking their ft of their mouths fairly early on, and studios at massive have made strikes that don’t paint them in the perfect of lights.
Another occasion that’s been struggling to management the narrative? The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which has been villainized for months for its strikes in opposition to the 2 worker-led unions and failing to safe a deal with the WGA specifically. Per the Hollywood Reporter, the AMPTP is now wanting to change that by hiring PR agency The Levinson Group. The Washington, DC-based firm helped the US Women’s National Soccer Team receiving pay parity, and founder Molly Levinson has beforehand labored at CBS and is claimed to be recognized for serving to shoppers with “reputational and risk concerns.”
Though a particular plan from Levinson has but to be finalized, it’s mentioned the corporate has been introduced on hand to shift the overall view that common individuals could have of studios and their CEOs as grasping and out of contact. A supply talking to Deadline famous that studios “need better coordination, better messaging” to fight the efforts of the writers and media over the summer time. As famous by THR, the AMPTP has beforehand employed non-entertainment PR corporations to assist with strikes, notably in the course of the 2007-2008 Writers Strike. SAG-AFTRA, for its half, has additionally introduced on some PR assist in the type of Stephanie Cutter, who was deputy marketing campaign supervisor for then-president Barack Obama forward of the 2012 presidential election.
It’s not shocking to hear that the AMPTP is hoping for writers and actors to eat one another alive and take no matter deal is obtainable to them. What’s extra shocking is how the strikes are practically 4 months in and it thinks there’s an opportunity to salvage the general public picture of it and the studios. Through social media and picketing, SAG-AFTRA and the WGA have made clear the place the blame lies for the strikes, and that they gained’t again down till everybody concerned advantages from it. And as a result of studios have publicly tried to play these strikes off as no huge deal (and one thing they need to actively punish strikers for), a brand new PR firm might not be sufficient.
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