Warner Bros. Ent. 14-year marketing and publicity vet Andrew Shipps has been upped to svp, marketing, Warner Bros. Intl TV Dist. (WBITD) to direct the studio's international television marketing team plus develope and supervise the implementation of global marketing strategies for its content offerings in the international television marketplace. He will oversee campaigns for original series produced by Warner Bros. Television, Telepictures Prods. and Warner Bros. Animation, as well as the international TV windows for theatrical motion pictures distributed by the studio from Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features and other international producers
Shipps will continue to report to Jeffrey R. Schlesinger, president, Warner Bros. Intl TV. and work closely with Lisa Gregorian, evp, worldwide marketing, Warner Bros. TV Group.
"In keeping with our ongoing efforts at Warner Bros. to identify and promote talented executives within the organization, I am pleased to announce Andrew's new position," said Schlesinger. "After many years of exemplary work in our division, he is ready to take on this new oversight responsibility and continue the tradition of providing creative and innovative promotional and marketing support for our programming to our international partners."
Shipps joined WBITD in 2000 as director, publicity, overseeing press and publicity activities for all WBITV-distributed series around the world. In 2001, he was promoted to vp, publicity & marketing services, WBITD. In this role, he added responsibility for the division's marketing and promotional activities, planning and organizing sales markets and events, supervising WBITD's global marketing execs in 10 international field offices, and servicing marketing, publicity and advertising materials to international broadcasters.
He was instrumental in the growth of WBITD's annual International Press Junket (IPJ), an event now shared by the other major studios, and was a primary mover in the creation of a second, targeted IPJ held each year in London.
Before joining WBITD, Shipps was a senior publicist at Warner Bros. Television, serving for six years as the studio publicist for such series as MURPHY BROWN, ER, LIFE GOES ON, STEP BY STEP and THE JOHN LARROQUETTE SHOW, as well as the miniseries THE SHINING and SINATRA, among others. During his tenure, he was twice awarded the Maxwell Weinberg Showmanship Award for Television by the Publicists Guild, recognizing the year's top TV publicity campaign, for his work on MURPHY BROWN.
Shipps began his career as a publicity assistant at FOX Broadcasting Co. in 1988, earning promotions to junior and, then, senior publicist. While at FOX, he launched and served as the network publicist for the groundbreaking variety series, IN LIVING COLOR. He remained at FOX for four years before moving to Barcelona, where he worked in NBC's on-site press department at the 1992 Summer Olympic Games.
Warner Bros. Intl TV Dist. is one of the world's largest distributors of feature films, television programs and animation to the international television marketplace (broadcast, pay cable, basic cable, satellite, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, digital platforms, etc.). It licenses some 48,000 hours of programming (including more than 6,000 features and 74 current series), dubbed or subtitled in more than 40 languages, to telecasters and cablecasters in more than 175 countries.
