In Shakespeare, the first thing you do is kill all the lawyers. Everywhere else, the first thing you do is fire the marketers.

That’s been a time-honored tradition in Hollywood for decades. Remember when New Line’s Bob Shaye canned his long-time head of marketing, Russell Schwartz, the guy who’d rolled out Peter Jackson’s $3 billion Lord of the Rings trilogy without issue but somehow a couple of years later couldn’t make manna from the muck of Shaye’s own passion project, The Last Mimzy?

It doesn’t matter if the shows the marketers are asked to parley into hits are actually, technically, horrible. Which brings us to Netflix, where the long knives have been flashing since even before that disastrous earnings call a couple of weeks ago. 

By then, high-profile Chief Marketing Officer Bozoma Saint John had already been gone nearly two months from her $4 million-a-year gig, just 22 months after leaving Endeavor to take the job.

Also read: Bozoma Saint John's Netflix Exit - The Mystery Gets Curiouser and Curiouser

When Saint John’s departure was announced, few thought much about it. After all, the charismatic Saint John had moved in and out of a string of high-profile marketing gigs with Pepsi, Beats/Apple Music, Uber and Endeavor over the past eight years. Netflix rather proudly flaunts its demanding workplace culture. Maybe she just had another big hop planned after deciding Netflix wasn’t to her taste any more than was Uber’s.

But then came those earnings, with Netflix’s first declines in subscriber counts in a decade, and 10 times more losses expected in this quarter. Maybe that’s why Saint John departed without an obvious Plan B. And more importantly, that’s definitely why everyone else started rethinking what they’re doing in the Streaming Wars. 

The industry-wide glee over a brutal comeuppance for a cocky, wallet-busting competitor is palpable, even if it’s affecting everyone else, as well. Budget reductions, cancellations, fewer project greenlights, even a longer lifespan for legacy cable and broadcast operations are back on the table, along with job cuts, and maybe not just at Netflix. 

So, of course among the first to go after Saint John were more marketing people, some 25 just-hired members of her most notable initiative, the fan-focused website Tudum, which putatively promised its writers editorial independence but never quite embraced that utopian ideal.  

The cuts were concentrated on a section of the site focused on “culture and trends” that insiders described as underperforming, always a death knell for continued employment under the company’s long-held policy of “Be No. 1 or be out the door.” 

The site’s quirky name mimics the two-note audio mark that plays when you launch Netflix. These days, it might as well signify recurring notes in the opening of Chopin’s Funeral March.   

Even for employees who survive the company’s budget reconsiderations, there’s lots to be anxious about, particularly those who took much of their compensation in stock options rather than pay. Taking the options option made sense when Netflix shares sold for close to $700 in November. With prices at $190 apiece on Friday (down 42% just since April 20), that gambit looks like one for pawns more than queens. 

Meanwhile, the rest of Bozoma’s brainchild appears safe(-ish), though given how things are playing out, it still seems a bad time to buy an expensive new house on the Malibu shore. Will there be changes with the unit behind Netflix’s many awards campaigns, for instance? 

Grabbing more Oscar nominations than anyone else this year was impressive; going 1-for-27 in Oscar wins considerably less so. But is that outcome due to not-quite-good-enough marketing, or not-quite-good-enough Oscar contenders? 

That issue has further sharpened as accounts have surfaced about the internecine warfare that sent long-time scripted programming chief Cynthia Holland out the door in the fall of 2020 in favor of international and unscripted head Bela Bajaria. At the time, many headlines termed Holland’s departure “shocking.”

Holland’s decline and exit is the original sin, to some Netflix creators’ thinking anyway, in the decline of the service’s programming quality. For years, Holland controlled the power to green-light projects, with the development taste and talent relationships to make it work. 

But Ted Sarandos, now the co-CEO, expanded the green-light power to multiple people, part of a strategy to dramatically increase programming to replace expected losses of licensed shows such as Friends and The Office. Bajaria saw her star rise precipitously as she found the kinds of global hits needed by an international service. 

Holland, meanwhile, clashed with Sarandos over declining quality control as the pipeline swelled to 40 production centers around the globe. 

Regardless of how much those conflicts mattered in creating the current situation, it says a lot that people are re-litigating a two-year-old office fight. And it’s true that the marketers can only do so much when they’re tasked with promoting way too many shows, with way too many of them not particularly interesting. Regardless, Netflix has reaped the fruits of Sarandos’ strategy, and now must dig out.

That second part may be even more difficult to pull off.

The good news for Netflix in a spring filled with bad news: the average chief marketing officer’s tenure with major brands was just 40 months in 2021, so there should be plenty of experienced candidates to replace Saint John. After all, the first thing we do in Hollywood is fire all the marketing people, even if we’re making crap shows. 

Netflix's abrupt late-week announcement of Marian Lee being promoted to take over its CMO role from Bozoma Saint John left out one key detail - why is Saint John leaving after just 22 months at Netflix?

“I’ve loved working with Boz and have been inspired by her creativity and energy,” said Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a statement Thursday that conspicuously left out the raison d'être. “She has attracted world class marketers to the company and encouraged them to be innovative leaders. We are grateful for her contributions and we wish her the best.”

For her part, the high-profile marketing executive herself illuminated very little. “I came to Netflix with a surplus of enthusiasm and creative energy and am immensely proud of the campaigns we inspired that sparked global conversations,” Saint John said. “It’s been a transformative two-year experience for which I will always be grateful.”

With Saint john receiving a huge pay raise to leave Endeavor in June 2020 for Netflix -- one report had her taking a "$7 million payday" to assume the streaming company's top marketing role -- Saint John's last job move was more easily understood. 

But her previous transitions follow a similar pattern, notably Saint John's also abrupt exit from Uber after just 12 months on the job. Or when she left Apple after 34 months to join Uber. 

Speculating Thursday evening in his popular, venture-capital-funded daily newsletter The Ankler, entertainment business reporter Richard Rushfield noted that Saint John's high salary (he pegged it at $4 million a year) has caused some folks in the video business to wonder, "How did she even keep the job so long? What took them so long?

"But really the question should be — why her?," Rushfield continued. "Boz's badass content of all-self-promotion, all-the-time attitude was the perfect personification of the service's ethos. So if they have suddenly figured that isn't working out, why should Boz be the one to pay the price?"

True, it's not much insight, but it's a start. 

Notably, at SXSW in March 2019, which was about nine months after leaving Uber, Saint John did provide some vague insight as to that departure. 

“When I got to Uber I was honest in my desire to go and change essentially what I thought was a challenging environment, especially for women and for people of color,” she said. “What I discovered was a lot of people who had a desire to do better, honestly, but couldn’t get out of their own way.

“At some point it became too overwhelming for me,” she concluded. “It became a good lesson for all of us: You don’t need to be the savior, you can save yourself, too.”

In any event, look for Saint John -- who recently purchased a $5.2 million home in Malibu -- to wind up somewhere else high-profile soon to save her own bottom line. ■

When Netflix named Saint John CMO in June, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. 

She’d spent the previous two decades working in executive roles at some of the world’s most formidable brands and tech companies, including Apple Music, Beats Music, PepsiCo and Uber. Saint John was the first African-American woman to join Netflix’s group of C-Suite executives and the streaming giant’s third marketing chief in less than 18 months. 

At Apple, she spearheaded campaigns geared toward growing consumer brand recognition and loyalty around the world. She made a name for herself at Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developer’s Conference, when she managed to get a room full of tech developers to rap— slightly—along to The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” 

In June 2017, Uber hired Saint John to repair the company’s reputation and morale. One year later she left to serve as CMO at entertainment and sports agency Endeavor. And she reportedly left that job after receiving a $7 million-a-year offer from Netflix.  

Over 15 million people subscribed to Netflix in the first three months of 2020, marking record growth for the top subscription video-on-demand service. In all, Saint John will be responsible for marketing to the 182.8 million Netflix subscribers. 

She joins the streaming behemoth at a time when the company is up against a slew of new competitors, including Disney Plus, HBO Max and Apple TV. But Saint John, who says she learned at an early stage in her career to “trust her gut,” seems to have plenty of ideas up her sleeve about how best to promote shows on the streaming service. 

The exec told a packed crowd at the 2019 online marketing festival in Germany that performance marketing is key to success. “All of our businesses and corporations require a level of intimacy with our consumer that can only be reached through performance marketing,” she said. “[We need to understand] what are the expectations of our audience? What do they want us to know about them and therefore we can service them better.”

Netflix has named former Endeavor executive Bozoma Saint John as its chief marketing officer.

Saint John replaces Jackie Lee-Joe, who had served as the streaming service’s CMO since September 2019. Saint John comes to the streaming service from sports-based company Endeavor, where she also served as chief marketing officer.

Prior to Endeavor, Saint John worked in consumer marketing and branding positions at Apple Music and Uber, respectively.

Saint John is the first African-American to break into Netflix’s top executive team, according to the streaming service.  

“Bozoma Saint John is an exceptional marketer who understands how to drive conversations around popular culture better than almost anyone. As we bring more great stories to our members around the world, she’ll define and lead our next exciting phase of creativity and connection with consumers,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, in a statement.

Netflix has announced the hiring of former Endeavor, Apple and Uber executive Bozoma Saint John as its next chief marketing officer. 

Saint John will take over for Jackie Lee-Joe, the former BBC executive who joined Netflix only last year but will depart—amicably, Netflix said—for undisclosed perusal reasons.

Saint John joins Netflix from Endeavor, where she was the top marketing executive for the company that controls, among other assets, talent agency William Morris Endeavor. 

“Bozoma Saint John is an exceptional marketer who understands how to drive conversations around popular culture better than almost anyone. As we bring more great stories to our members around the world, she’ll define and lead our next exciting phase of creativity and connection with consumers,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, in a statement.

Added Saint John: “I’m thrilled to join Netflix, especially at a time when storytelling is critical to our global, societal well-being. I feel honored to contribute my experience to an already dynamic legacy, and to continue driving engagement in the future.”

Prior to joining Endeavor, Saint John served as chief brand officer for ride-sharing giant Uber. Her nearly 20-year career also includes a stint as head of global consumer marketing for Apple Music and iTunes, as well as the head of the Music and Entertainment Group at Pepsi-Cola North America. 

The hiring of the high-profile African-American executive came as Netflix also announced that it will move 2% of its cash holdings, initially $100 million, into financial institutions that focus on Black communities.