CMO Spotlight | Tricia Melton - Warner Brothers

The CMO Spotlight is a chance to get an inside look into the minds and journeys of high-performing marketing leaders. 

Setup CEO Joe Koufman virtually sat down with Tricia Melton, the CMO of Kids Young Adults & Classics at Warner Brothers, to talk about her career path and how she uses strategy to make her work culturally relevant.

“The power that entertainment storytelling can hold to truly reflect culture and to reflect inclusion and diversity matters. It has been largely missing up until the last five to ten years. It wasn’t widely recognized as an important aspect of storytelling in most of Hollywood, and that’s changed.”

WATCH + read the recap BELOW

Q1 | Tell us about your career path.

Trisha Melton has been in the entertainment marketing industry her entire career. She began her career at a company called Little Communications in New York. Her next gig was with Food Network and then she helped start a new cable network catered for women called Oxygen. She moved to Lifetime and then was asked to move to Atlanta to do marketing for TBS. After TBS, Melton moved into a consulting role and then was recruited to work for Freeform.

Melton currently oversees global marketing for Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and TCM and she’s also in charge of three different animation studios at Warner Brothers.

Q2 | What advice would you give to other marketing professionals?

“Closed mouths don’t get fed.”

Melton understands the importance of marketing professionals advocating for themselves in their career, communicating their needs, and asking for what they want.

She also added, “Manage your own career. You're responsible for managing your own career. Don't assume that your boss, your HR department, [or] your company is going to do that for you, because they won't.”

Q3 | What is your superpower?

Melton stated “I think one of the superpowers that I have is frankly the ability to adapt.” She added in the entertainment industry it's especially important to be adaptable because there are so many moving parts.

Q4 | What values are important to you as a leader?

Melton emphasized her expectations from leaders, “Honesty, transparency, directness, and the willingness to take risks for big ideas.” 

Q5 | Tell us about an impactful campaign.

She and her team are repositioning the TCM Brand. The network plays classic films primarily from the 40s and 50s when the “culture and the world was in a very different space.” Classic movies aren’t always sensitive to modern day beliefs, leading Melton to ask, “How do you resolve that in today's culture?”

She went on to say, “We spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting on that and really positioning TCM to be about that connection of culture and classic.” They came up with the programming called “Reframe” which focused on a classic movie and “how society and culture treated certain situations, characters, themes then, and how we have to think about that now.” She described that programming is TCM’s “secret sauce” because they recognized the importance of using Classic Films as a way to learn and grow from the past.

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For more marketing leadership advice and a view into the mindset of marketing executives in various industries, be sure to watch the full interview with Tricia Melton, and keep an eye out for more thought leadership from our CMO Spotlights.

Watch the full interview to the right.