NAME: Alison Hoffman
TITLE: Chief Marketing Officer
COMPANY: Lionsgate-owned Starz
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Led the effort to develop a performance marketing strategy and team around the Starz streaming app, including revamping the in-house analytics team in New York. Focused Starz on becoming more digital- and female-first.
QUOTABLE: “When you don’t get defensive, it’s exciting to see that you are moving the needle, that you have made progress with an audience. It helps you feel more in control in a very competitive environment.”

Most entertainment marketers didn’t get into the business because of their love of data.

But in this age of direct-to-consumer streaming offerings, many of them are now finding themselves leading teams of data scientists and analytics interpreters right next to their teams of motion-graphics designers and copywriters. The two skill sets aren’t often found together in the same executive, but that’s not the case with Alison Hoffman, Starz’s chief marketing officer.

“She’s probably the best left-brain, right-brain marketer in the business right now,” said Starz chief operating officer Jeffrey Hirsch, to whom Hoffman reports. “Our marketing continues to be some of the best in the business.”

Like so many entertainment marketers, Hoffman got her start launching shows. From 2005 to 2010, she served as vice president of creative and brand strategy at AMC, debuting such groundbreaking series as Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. She joined Starz in 2012 as senior VP, originals marketing, and quickly climbed her way through the ranks, being named chief marketing officer in June 2016.

During that time, she has seen Starz through several iterations. When she arrived, Starz was a premium cable network with a business model much like HBO and Showtime, but like both of those networks, Starz has been forced to evolve. In 2010, with the arrival of former HBO CEO Chris Albrecht (who departed in February), the company started aggressively launching TV originals, with flagship shows Outlander and Power premiering in 2014. In April 2016, it launched the Starz standalone streaming app. And in December 2016, Lionsgate completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of the company.

Today, Starz continues to offer Outlander and Power, which ends this season and will segue into a spinoff starring Mary J. Blige. Along with those shows are Vida, American Gods, Sweetbitter and more.

When Starz decided to launch its app, that was a “trial by fire” for Hoffman and her team, she said. While entertainment marketing is about getting potential audiences excited about shows, performance marketing is about getting people to subscribe to your service and stick with it. Via real-time data, the results of those efforts come in immediately and constantly, providing a continuous feedback loop.

“I come from the world of entertainment marketing, of key art and trailers, and of bringing a show to life through a marketing campaign,” Hoffman said. “But to be able to get real feedback through acquisition marketing is really fun. We’ve had to pivot the mindset of the organization to be more digital-first. Before [we launched the app], we didn’t have that relationship with our customers.”

When Hoffman was given oversight of the app, no such performance marketing team existed at Starz, nor had Hoffman ever overseen that sort of marketing before. She learned quickly, though, and successfully got new teams up and running, including ramping up insights and analytics teams. In the past year alone, subscribership to the Starz app has grown by 62%.

“She’s been very good at understanding the marketplace and adapting to it,” Starz executive VP, affiliate sales Joe Glennon said. “Her adaptability is unbelievable. What we were doing even as recently as one year ago has changed dramatically.”

One thing that offering the direct-to-consumer app has helped Starz understand is that it appeals strongly to women. The network is intentionally leaning into that appeal with its programming and marketing, led by Hoffman, as it moves forward.

“Female audiences are driving the success of our content,” Hoffman said, an insight she has gained via all of the new performance-marketing analytics now at her fingertips. “When you look at us versus our competitors, we do skew female. Women love complex, interesting, character-driven stories. This is is a nice open field for us to play in.”

Another thing that so much data provides is constant feedback, and feedback isn’t always something people welcome. But Hoffman said her team has learned to embrace it.

“I feel really proud of my team that it doesn’t feel like something to get defensive about anymore,” she said. “I think people are really excited to see how things perform and move on to the next challenge. When you don’t get defensive, it’s exciting to see that you are moving the needle, that you have made progress with an audience. It helps you feel more in control in a very competitive environment.”

Encouraging and Creative

It’s that encouraging attitude — among other things — that Hoffman’s team likes about working for her.

“As a leader, she’s very creative but very collaborative,” Whitney Lee, executive director, originals marketing, said. “She listens to everyone in the room and she wants to hear from everyone. She wants to get to the best solution and that helps bring up the entire team and make them want to grow. That’s why she, to me, is a wonder woman: there are very few people who have both sides of that coin and can lead a team of people who don’t necessarily have that ability.”

“It’s very inspiring to work under someone like that,” Lee added. “She cultivates a culture of people who want to do the best creative work. She holds us all to a standard that is driven by passion.”

Starz has promoted Alison Hoffman to the newly created position of chief marketing officer from executive vice president of marketing. It's one of a number of top executive promotions, under recently-renewed CEO Chris Albrecht, in the last few weeks at the premium programmer, which is in the process of being acquired by Lionsgate for $4.4 billion in cash and stock. 

“Alison’s vision and execution has helped reposition Starz as a destination for acclaimed and diverse original programming and build a brand that reflects the strength of our unmatched content offerings,” Jeffrey Hirsch, chief operating officer (a recent promotion) at Starz, said in a release. “She led the way earlier this year with the Starz brand transformation, launching a masterbrand strategy for the network which involved integrating the Encore services into the new Starz, as well as the highly successful launch of the new Starz App.”

Hoffman joined Starz in 2012 after being VP of creative and brand strategy at AMC Networks, key architect for notable campaigns for The Walking Dead, Mad Men and Breaking Bad among others. She had been senior VP of originals marketing at Starz before being promoted to EVP of marketing in February 2015. 

Starz is gearing up a big rebranding of its Encore service that it hopes will drive more subscribers to the premium channel.

The April 5 rebranding of Encore’s services to “Starz Encore” channels will include running past episodes of Starz original series on Starz Encore outlets, timed before new seasons of the shows return to Starz.

Currently Starz has about 23.6 million subscribers, while the lower-priced Encore services have about 32.2 million. Starz would like to narrow that gap.

In January, Starz tested the upsell potential with Cablevision Systems and other operators by airing seasons one and two of pirate series Black Sails on Encore ahead of the third-season launch on Starz. The results, executives said, were encouraging: Of 700,000 Encore (non-Starz) households that sampled Black Sails, more than 2% later added Starz to their subscriptions and went on to watch new episodes on Starz.

“As you look at this business, it’s very competitive, there are a lot of choices, and brands become more and more important,” Starz president of global marketing and product planning Jeff Hirsch said. “We have a great Starz brand that is continuing to grow. Encore has 9 million more Encore customers than Starz customers based on how some of our distributors sell us. How do we strengthen both products by putting them together? The idea is to launch a master brand where we create a windowing strategy across both Starz and Starz Encore. What we hope is, it will strengthen them and simplify them.”

Large distributors like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have sold the services separately in the past, Hirsch and other executives said.

“What we hope [the rebranding] will do and what we think it will do is strengthen the product for our distributors,” Hirsch said. “By simplifying the portfolio under a master brand, by co-mingling on-demand together and windowing back and forth, we believe this will give a better upsell and revenue opportunity for our distributors’ partners that sell the product separately.”

There are six Starz channels (five are themed, such as Starz in Black) and eight Encore networks (including themed versions such as Encore Westerns).

Starz is backing the eff ort with a marketing campaign using the tagline “Starz: Obsessable,” highlighting original series and hit movies.

Alison Hoffman, Starz executive vice president of marketing, said a study by Hollywood marketing firm Troika found that 85% of adults consider themselves fans of something, and 70% of that group identify themselves as fans of a TV series.

“That was the nugget,” Hoffman said, saying Starz originals like Outlander and Ash vs Evil Dead have passionate fan bases, not unlike fans of the Avengers and Star Wars movies.

Starz has the rights to Marvel’s Avengers movie franchise — it is currently airing Avengers: Age of Ultron — and will have the premium rights to Star Wars: The Force Awakens later this year.

Hoffman said the “Starz: Obsessable” campaign, and a subsequent social-media effort, should further drive new subscribers to the channel.

Premium cable network Starz has promoted senior vice president of originals marketing Alison Hoffman to executive VP of marketing.

In her new role, Hoffman will continue to lead marketing strategy and planning for original productions -- including show positioning, creative and media strategy and digital marketing -- and will also spearhead all consumer and affiliate marketing for the network.

Prior to joining Starz in 2012, Hoffman was vice president of creative and brand strategy at AMC Networks, where she launched several award-winning marketing campaigns for flagship AMC series Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. She also helped reposition the network as it transformed from a movie channel to a general entertainment network.

Starz CEO Chris Albrecht announced the promotion, saying, “Alison has been instrumental in the success of the company’s original programming expansion and building the Starz brand."