Paramount Global is launching a new branding campaign under the tagline “Popular is Paramount,” featuring select properties from its portfolio. And this includes Star Trek, with Strange New Worlds getting pride of place in a new TV spot.
Trek in “Popular is Paramount”
Paramount Global, the corporate owner of Paramount+, CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, and more, is launching a brand new brand campaign with the goal to “emphasize Paramount’s definitive value among the advertiser, distributor, investor and creative communities as a powerful global entertainment partner of choice.” The new campaign includes television ads, social media and outdoor advertising, all featuring “Paramount’s biggest IP front and center and anchored in research-backed insights.”
Star Trek has pride of place, kicking off the TV spot with Strange New Worlds representing the franchise, emphasizing the “Over 50 Years Of Fandom.”
With Picard ending in April and Discovery wrapping up early next year, Strange New Worlds is currently the only live-action Star Trek series with a potential future, at least officially.
However, Discovery will get some attention in the campaign as well, as part of the outdoor and social media campaign. It is featured in one of the brand banners rolling out for the campaign (as seen below).
“‘Popular is Paramount’ is a celebration of our company, content and creative excellence,” said Paramount president and CEO Bob Bakish in a statement. “It simply captures what we do best — giving audiences what they want, with smart strategies that maximize the reach and power of our unified portfolio to successfully market and distribute IP all around the world at scale. Our content engine is driving huge and undeniable momentum, underscoring our ability to produce big, mass market hits across genres, demographics, formats and platforms.”
The campaign will roll out across Paramount-owned media as well as paid media. The outdoor campaign will include placements in New York and Los Angeles. The “Popular is Paramount” campaign will run through Summer 2023.
I’ve never seen a good Paramount+ ad. Not once. Poorly edited and not compelling. It’s just sad. D-list talent at work.
This one’s perfectly fine. Relax.
See, that is exactly the wrong response. He doesn’t need to relax. He’s relaxed–and expressing his opinion, which is what this forum is for.
See, what i’m saying is that bad review of a commercial is just ridiculous. Relax, there.
See, I think that, as usual, you’re the one who needs to relax. Nobody cares what you think is ridiculous. Go back to TikTok.
You got it, uncle Silvy.
Hey, that’s cute, A-Pred.
And yes, I’m sure I’m old enough to be your uncle. Impossible that someone of my generation would still be so obnoxious… You know, you learn with age.
Oh you’re old enough to be just to my uncle, I guarantee it, as I’m just six years old!
You said you were 12! You know, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive! You can’t remember your own lies, son!
Based on some of your posts, I was thinking 15, but OK.
I haven’t. :-P
Come on man, work with me here…
A bit strong (no need to lower yourself to his level), but I certainly agree with your sentiment, Silvereyes.
I know, but this guy is a bully, and way worse in his posts than I am. Besides this is hilarious and helps me unwind…
Yeah, he makes you and I look reasonable here…lol
Please stop with the condescending BS towards others here all the time. Most of you posts have solid opinions and thoughts, but then you frequently devote into trying to act like you get to determine what comments are acceptable or not here.
I admit that I can be the same way and I need to stop and take a step back there. 😮💨 It’s something to work on but sometimes it gets to be way too much so yeah both of us (me and Alpha) need to stop.
You’re way too hard on yourself. I’ve never really seen any posts of yours that fall in the category of our friend A-Pred. Please continue the way you have been doing. I’m not always very pleasant either, but I fight for the oppressed! I’m joking, but something that will always trigger me are people who judge or try to curtail other people’s opinions through intimidation tactics. No one has the right to put themselves above others and decide what’s good or bad. A-Pred does that, I’ve never seen you do that.
Thank you.
Gritizens, you been absolute joy to talk to here. I smile every time I see a post of yours. You’re even handed and you don’t spend your time criticizing others for their opinions as being discussed, just focused on your own. That’s the way it should be.
Thank you.
Yeah, me too. I know I can get that way at times.
The 6 year old (or 12 year old) has gone silent. C’mon, AlphaPredator, man up or take the D! LMAO/
I agree 100%. AlphaPreditor needs to stop his “gatekeeping with a smile” practice here.
AlphaPredator is the resident contrarian. State an opinion and they’ll be ready to tell you you’re wrong in a heartbeat.
“Fine has multiple definitions. Fine is unacceptable.” -Spock, Star Trek 09
Also, This is what I do for work. Direct/produce commercials/content. I hate that P+ is mediocre at best in terms of marketing as this impacts subscriber rates and therefore underwrites Trek content being produced.
The commercial is basic. Their team is basic.
I agree with every element of your post here.
No, it’s not. They use some chicken-shit common font when they already have the iconic slanted TOS font, plus the whole presentation here just looks cheap and rushed.
It’s 30 second ad for Paramount, not Star Trek. It hits the right beats and gets the information across. That anyone would even care enough to criticize it is utterly baffling. But hey, gotta have something to complain about each day!
This is an ad targeted at advertisers, not the audience.
It sells what it’s supposed to.
It’s not intended to make the viewer personally want to watch the shows, it’s designed to underscore that Paramount is successfully hitting the mass demographic.
Yeah, dude just needs to chill.
No, his opinion is just fine without your BS spin on it.
I’ve seen number of advertiser-targeted ads for TV series, and this one is piss-poor looking — it’s cheap and rushed looking. It is what it is,
They’d better hope the ad buyers already know Trek content, because this embarrassing video is not going to make many sales on it’s own,
I agree, except for the Super Bowl ads which they paid a third party to do.
This is shockingly bad. And to not use the iconic slanted font shows that they flunked Branding 101.
These comments are a mess. I agree with Luke, it’s a really cheap looking trailer with zilch artistic merit.
the new P+ Trek Universe poster/banner leaves off Shatner! its crazy . even hes tweeting about it
Well you know that just makes me more excited.
It’s fine with me. Shatner can be a real a-hole.
I don’t know if I’d go that far. From what I’ve seen of him in one fairly intimate setting, he’s sort of cluelessly self involved, if that makes sense. And like other highly successful people I’ve dealt with professionally, he tends to look down upon people who have not achieved his level of success. In fact, I’ve found that’s a pretty common trait among that cohort.
Try telling that to autistic people
Did…you just type all that thinking you were contradicting the assertion that Shat can be an a-hole?
Truly impressive!
As I mentioned above, a friend of mine said the exact opposite and that was after spending the afternoon with him.
A good friend of mine spent an afternoon with him some years back. He was charming, engaged and wanted to hear about him and his family. He’s met a lot of people over the years and he said that afternoon with Shatner was one of the highlights.
Even a-holes can be nice sometimes. I’m glad your friend had a good experience with him though.
Another friend met Takei and said he was also great — but could be a bit of an a-hole.
I’m not doubting that.
I think for P+ purposes, he’s not the face of Trek anymore.
But I love how they have the nerve to feature Yellowstone. You can’t even see that on P+. You have to subscribe to Peacock, or watch it on Paramount’s cable station. That’s a load of crap right there.
It appears to be an ad for Paramount generally (at least given the end log is Paramount, not Paramount+). I just wish that ST would get the same level of mainstream press that Yellowstone and its progeny get, but let’s face it, ST operates at a lower level as far as that goes.
Yeah I’ve seen way more ads for 1923 on regular TV than I seen for PIC, SNW, etc. It’s obvious those shows have become the new flavor but that’s probably because they are a big hit for Paramount. The fact they renewed 1923, a show with a staggering $20-30 million budget per episode but cancelled DIS which probably doesn’t come close to those figures does say a lot.
The thinking is probably that they’ve snared as many Star Trek fans as they can, which helped them get growth when they needed it. 1923 probably helped them get a lot of new subscribers.
Agreed! I think that’s another reason why DIS got the boot, they have saturated the market with as many fans they can get to sign up with at this point. Yes, probably a few more sign up every year, but not at a major level anymore. Now it’s just finding the right balance to keep the ones they do have most of the year and with probably less expensive shows to boot like LDS and PRO as examples.
I suspect with 1923, they got tons of new people to sign on to P+ for the first time.
Yep, it’s going to be more and more about equilibrium by 2025. They still want subscriber growth, but they have a media empire to balance and get a profit from between streaming, linear networks and the movie studio. They should be able to maintain a healthy eco system if they are smart, so I get the desire to start pushing the overall brand with an ad blitz – after all, it’s why they adopted the Paramount name for the whole company.
With Star Trek they’ll spend just enough to keep the fans on the hook for P+, but won’t go overboard anymore. 4 series and about 40 out of 52 weeks a year is probably a cost effective way to secure that.
I still say exclusive HD remasters of DS9 and Voyager on it would help, but what do I know?
1923 has been delivering big for Paramount+ with two very high profile actors that make 1923 an easy sell.
Star Trek is, well, Star Trek. The appeal for Star Trek has continued to narrow over the years. It still has a fairly large and loyal fan base but it lacks the broad appeal of Star Wars. Unless they can work Tom Cruise into a Star Trek movie the current state of Star Trek is pretty much what it will likely to be in the years ahead.
Yeah I agree completely. And you read enough of my posts to know I try to be as objective and realistic on all of this as possible. I love Star Trek like everyone here, but I acknowledge long ago the franchise simply has a ceiling and it’s very hard to break it. It’s probably happened a few times, but probably rare.
That’s why I’m not shocked another movie can’t get off the ground and probably won’t until they can just make a cheaper film in the process because projections are probably on the lower side. Same with these shows, they seem to be popular but still basically for mostly Star Trek fans end of the day. When people were arguing Picard was being made to attract ‘new’ fans or fans of Patrick Stewart, I always said that was complete hogwash. It’s going to just be the same fans whose been watching these shows for 30+ years and season 3 fully confirmed it once they ditched most of the new cast and direction the show was going just to go hardcore TNG again. And it’s probably way more popular due to it.
As much as they try and make it for the ‘masses’ it just doesn’t work. I would love for all the movies to do what Marvel films do as I would love for the shows to be huge hits and market growers that is capturing a new audience in droves but that’s not the reality either. These new shows have been going on since 2017, I don’t know a single person whose watched any of them that has never watched Trek before. Do you? There are people out there that don’t even know a lot of these shows even exist.
Exactly why we rightly predicted Discovery was the first show to get cancelled…and yes it may not be the last either.
So I think we’re sadly seeing the real reality play out and they either realize they can’t justify spending the money they probably were with shows like Discovery because it just doesn’t bring in a big enough audience OR they just realized you don’t need 5 shows on the air because they probably don’t attract enough people 50 weeks out of the year. Or most likely both. I pointed out we only had ONE year of all five shows on the air anyway which was last year. And now one year later that dream has already died lol.
But maybe we will still get five shows, just much cheaper in the long run but like you I suspect it will be down to four shows a year now. I think if they can hold onto SNW and the animated shows and give us the 25th century legacy spin off show in Picard’s place, that would be a good trade off, at least for a few years.
BUT I will say this, while all the Yellowstone shows are obviously really hot right now and grabbing new viewers, I’m very doubtful we’ll be talking about them for the next 50 years like we have with Star Trek…which I do believe will still be around another 50 years as well (if WW 3 doesn’t happen like on the show ;)).
Star Trek has always been more about its endurance than anything.
That nails it and, yeah, Yellowstone isn’t built to last. Eventually it will run its course.
Best guess is that Paramount will trim Star Trek down to two live action series (SNW and Picard spinoff) and stick with Lower Decks. Prodigy is the big question mark since it’s actually a Nickelodeon series, not a Paramount+ original.
“the franchise simply has a ceiling and it’s very hard to break it. It’s probably happened a few times, but probably rare.”
the eras Trek (almost?) broke into the mainstream ‘cool’
late 70s/79 – TMP (and the build up to it)
1982/84? – TWOK/TSFS (sort of – death/return of Spock)
1986/7 – TVH (& curiosity of TNG)
early 90s – TNG s4/5/TUC (25th anniversary era)
mid 90s – AGT/GEN (& curiosity of VOY)
1996 – FC
2009/13 – ST09/ID
20?? – ST Multiverse Movie :D
You could argue the DS9 premiere as well – still Star Trek’s most-watched episode to date.
That’d be in mid 90s section then
ST has always been perceived as kind of geeky, and not necessarily in a good way. I’m old enough to remember when TMP was released. It got a lot of press coverage, but overall, journalists saw it as more of a curiosity than anything else (which is understandable, really. No one had ever resurrected an old TV show that way). But it never got the kind of fawning coverage Star Wars got a few years earlier such as the seven page write-up in Time as “the year’s best movie” (May 30, 1977 issue. I still have a couple of copies of that).
I’m not so sure about 1923 ‘delivering big.’
I have to wonder about its return on investment.
1923s demand metrics fell off over the season, falling to the bottom half of the Parrot Analytics digital originals top ten where Discovery spends the back half of its seasons.
As of the week ending March 3rd, it’s 29.8X average demand in the US. I can’t see that it’s broken much higher than 30X. Discovery usually sits in the lower 30s during its runs.
Picard’s fallen off to 42.2 but still high for anything Paramount.
1923’s beginning to climb in the UK and Europe so there’s that.
Now Parrot’s metrics may not be as insightful for the older demographics watching 1923, but it’s got me wondering if Paramount’s taking its more diverse younger Trek base for granted.
The important thing will be if 1923 is generating subscriber growth and holding their interest. That’s something it’s difficult to get a sense of from any public metrics.
Good point about subscriber growth. Even if 1923 isn’t the hottest show, if it lead to 10,000 new subscribers who stick around, it may be considered a success, if not a profitable one, as it helps grow their base.
That said, that price tag… whoof. Can’t see that being sustainable, and is exactly what they need to eliminate if they want to skew towards profitability as they claim.
Honestly, that’s a MUCH bigger drain than anything Trek.
It’s on Paramount+ outside the US.
This to target advertisers. They may not only be interested in the US audience.
Good point, TG47. I need to consider the wider picture here. Thanks.
Yup, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Yellowstone is on Paramount+ in other territories outside of the U.S. This spot is for advertisers.
Shatner has not been the face of the franchise for two decades.
Let it go.
I think it’s fine, and if I’m not mistaken it has been debunked as the “new” Star Trek universe poster/banner. It has been around since the last Star Trek Day in Sept ’22.
And in it they also include Uhura… who had recently died, Spock, Mariner and Seven too, so it’s not just captains but a collection of characters from the franchise.
It was just a banner for that event. That’s pretty much it.
Shatner tweets whenever he feels slighted. He hasn’t been the face of the franchise for twenty-five years now.
At this point he hasn’t been the face of the franchise since 1990, arguably. Certainly not since the mid-90s at the very least.
He’ll always be the face of the franchise 😊
I bet their media department spend like $100K on coming up with this incredible font that is just dumb given TOS font is already iconic,
This is the P+ take on New Coke as applied to Trek titling.
Outside of this thread, no one, anywhere cares about the Trek font.
As a graphic designer my life, in ways, revolves around font. So I respectfully disagree lol.
And there’s a whole lot of people in the world who make their living solely by making and designing fonts who would probably also disagree.
I just responded to UpperDecks with some history of the Trek font which is actually pretty interesting. To me, anyhow 😅.
And to me as well (and I have a teenager who has a LOT to say about such things).
It’s such a big part of our day-to-day visual experience. I understand how people could just pass the whole thing by, but they’re missing a out on a very interesting little world of design.
We font enthusiasts must stick together! 😁
Indeed!
That font is from The Cage pilot with Jeffrey Hunter as Pike. It is as old school Trek font as exists.
I don’t agree. The Cage font was a bespoke hand-written font that is more squashed down and quite short in terms of height – and you’ll notice some small differences in the repeated “R”‘s and “T”‘s that point towards it’s hand-crafted nature. The kerning is a little inconsistent too, or the space between each letter. For me it’s quite similar to “Rifton Caps” as a typeface.
Paramount launched its new branding early in 2021, and I think the font here is just a variation on the bespoke one they created for that branding which is called “Peak Sans”. It’s a more slender, narrower and stretched, vertically speaking, font than the Cage’s.
My word, I AM a nerd.
Keep going! YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Haha, thank you for the words of encouragement!
I can appreciate a typeface nerd, as I’ve spent a not-so-insignificant amount of time in my life scrutinizing fonts and typefaces (I was a designer in a previous career). Very impressed, genuinely.
It was clearly inspired by The Cage font. Beyond that, I leave you to your nerd-gasm.
I don’t think you understand how branding works. Did you watch the actual video, or just look at that one thumbnail that shows Pike and “Star Trek”?
As I said to UpperDecks, you’ll notice that they use the same “hero” font for the messaging throughout the video: “Power is Star Trek… South Park….The top animated cable series… RuPaul’s Drag Race…” etc.
This is a branded piece of content for Paramount, not just Star Trek, that keeps in line with the branding guidelines Paramount have developed that means that all of their content has a cohesive look. Basically branding guidelines are rules put together for the designers that tell them what fonts to use, how to use them, what colours to use, when to use them, what kinds of images to use etc. They’re created as a rulebook in the event different designers come and go during the creation process, but there are guidelines for all to follow so regardless of the person involved the output will still look the same.
And I doubt anyone at Paramount’s branding and marketing department was looking towards the font from The Cage for inspiration of the overall look or feel for their company – it’s way too niche of a reference – or as an inspiration for their own bespoke font “Peak Sans”, that is used throughout their graphics on all of their branded content online.
I watched the video, and I watched the opening title of The Cage. It looks to me like they are evoking the font of the “Star Trek” title from The Cage here.
I agree it doesn’t look great, it is visually so lazy, BUT in defence of the font used…
If you notice it is the same “hero” font that is used throughout the video. “Power is Star Trek… South Park….The top animated cable series….” etc.
This is just a branding consistency thing. If they were to use the iconic slanted Star Trek typeface, and then the South Park one, which is “Thunderbird” I believe and has a western felt to it, and so on it wouldn’t look like a cohesive branded advert. And the designers probably had to adhere to strict brand guidelines developed by Paramount in accordance to how they want their company to appear online.
I’m a font nerd.
And interestingly enough, the Star Trek font was created by visual effects pioneer and legend Richard Edlund. He was one of the founders of ILM and oversaw the creation of the visual effects on Star Wars for example, totally changing the game for the industry as a whole. However, on Trek he worked as a hand-lettering artist. So on TOS all the font that appears in the titles was done by hand, another art form lost to the ages. The font itself was originally just called “Star Trek”, but was renamed “Horizon” for some reason, which I think is a shame.
You do know that this echos the actual Star Trek font from the movies, where they used the straight version instead of the slant?
Yes, it’s not got the iconic ‘E’ with the slanted middle bar, but it’s close and there are other things than Trek on the streamer.
Look it up.
Strange New World is the new flagship. They’ll likely keep that, Prodigy, and Lower Decks.
Yeah hopefully.
I think they will keep PRO. It’s likely not that expensive unless something saying otherwise has come out and I never saw it. Plus it’s a kids show and getting kids into Trek is never a bad thing.
I think you’re correct here. Animations typically employee less people than live action productions. There’d still be lots of people involved in the preproduction and animation and pipeline stages, but from what I understand the post production is a relatively short process involving compositing, rendering, editing and then sound design, score and mixing.
But it would be nothing in compared to the amount of people working on pre-production, shooting, and post-production stages of a live action like Picard. The post stage alone is a massive undertaking.
The actors jobs on animations are shorter too, as recording voice is a much quicker process than shooting on a set. They’d still charge the same amount for both animation and live action appearances, paying for their time essentially, but they wouldn’t be needed for that long. So that reduces costs too.
Hopefully Prodigy goes on for a long, long time!
There was an interview on Trekyards with one of the show runners Aaron Waltke who basically confirmed that. He said that Prodigy has only a fraction of the staff of what the live action shows has and that basically every producer does multiple jobs other shows just have person to do. He didn’t come out and say it, but he basically implied that’s why the show got delayed in the first season because there was just enough people to finish ii faster.
I suspect it’s the same thing for LDS. It’s also why they both got two season renewals up front because it takes longer to make an animated show in the early stage but they probably only have a certain amount of people working on them and just need the time.
Ah very interesting, thank you for this! Didn’t realise that that was possibly the reason for the delay. Even on the “smaller” Star Trek productions you’d expect them to hire as many people as they need to get the job done, but perhaps there’s a shortage of people in the industry? Or maybe it just wasn’t there in the budget? I really like Aaron Waltke and his love of Trek so will definitely check this out!
And I think you’re right about LDS too. For mostly 2D animation it could possibly be a quicker process than Prodigy maybe, as there wouldn’t be as much rendering time involved for the 3D art elements (I’ve noticed most of the ships were 2D at the beginning, but are now 3D made to look 2D since season 2). But I could be wrong about that.
I’m really hoping we hear some renewal news for these two shows soon!
I doubt its about a shortage. If anything it’s likely because of 1) budget. They said, here’s what you have to spend, and they decided one way to cut costs was to have fewer producers. or 2) Covid impacted hiring, as it was being made in 2021.
That its been a big success can lead to one of two things: they dump more money into it, or decide its profitable as-is and keep things the way they are.
I can’t see why they wouldn’t keep Prodigy.
Nickelodeon cable has tanking viewership, but that’s nothing to do with this show. It’s why they were smart to release Prodigy to streaming first.
Paramount is trying to be a mass market demographic streamer, and that includes kids.
At present, Netflix skews hard to younger adults.
Disney is still strongest with kids and families, but rolling in Hulu and Star helps.
WB skews male, and Discovery older female.
Amazon does better, but not with kids or family viewing.
Paramount+ has about the most even demographic distribution of the larger US streamers.
Unless Prodigy is doing much worse in streaming views than any metrics suggest, it seems to be off in its own niche for an auto renewal.
We can only hope. The two animated shows are much lower cost than their live action counterparts, so hopefully greenlighting their new seasons is a no brainer.
Let’s hope the promo means they will be giving the go ahead for S3 of SNW very soon and some form of live action spinoff from Picard.
There’s no doubt they’re keeping PRO, it’s key to attracting kids. That said, if viewership declines they could always replace it with a different kid-centric show. But I do think a kids show is going to be in their plan for the foreseeable future.
LDS is now on its fourth season. I think it’s a fine show, but my concern would be – how long can they mine the premise of a wacky Trek comedy before it gets completely stale? I think 4-5 seasons is probably enough. Go out before it gets old.
The ad is lazy and all over the place.. I understand it’s only 30 seconds, but we still have seven episodes of PIC to go, and not one PIC shot? Where are the shots of LDS and PRG? Regarding other properties, I’ve been a huge fan of RPDR for more than a decade, but Paramount+ does not air the current season. It airs live on MTV. Yes, they have a giant back log of Drag Race and Drag Race All Stars, but maybe promoting a show you don’t air the current season of is a bad idea.
C’mon guys, Paramount is now Paramount Global, it’s focusing growth across all its markets.
Again, this isn’t for the audience in the United States, it’s for advertisers.
In countries outside the United States, several of these shows are available on P+, not on linear or other Paramount specialty channels.
Seriously puzzling how many people want to tear apart a :30 COMMERCIAL. And not even a commercial for Star Trek, but for the app itself.
What’s next? Are we going to analyze, criticize, and trash-talk the “on sale” sticker on your Strange New Worlds blu-ray because the color scheme is science blue and not command gold?
Are we just bored now?
Jeff Albertson/Comic Book Guy first appeared in The Simpsons in 1991, so it’s not like the stereotype is new. We’re just seeing that it continues to have merit.
And it’s now become easier to find, as those types all have their own YouTube channels, and inexplicably get 100K subscribers…