Sony Photos Leisure’s Chief Communications Officer Robert Lawson is being upped to SVP, Company Communications for your complete Sony Group. The brand new job will carry Lawson, a nine-year vet of the Culver Metropolis lot who was a key consigliere in the course of the 2014 cyber-attack to Sony HQ in Tokyo, Japan, reporting to Sony Group Corp Chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.
Scroll all the way down to learn the information which was simply made official to inside employees by Sony Photos Leisure Chairman and CEO, Tony Vinciquerra.
Lawson’s successor might be named within the subsequent few months. He’ll stay in Culver Metropolis for the subsequent few months earlier than heading to Japan. Lawson’s segue to the management group displays the significance Sony is placing on its leisure firms (motion pictures, music, video games) which rep 60% of the conglom’s general income. Massive Sony needs the Tokyo HQ management group to mirror the worldwide nature of its enterprise and transferring Lawson from US/Leisure is a part of that effort. Lawson led the comms group throughout an excellent interval of turnaround for Sony Photos Leisure, learn revenue in 2016 was $280M when he arrived versus annual revenue in 2022 of $894M. After being a guide to SPE in the course of the Sony Hack, Lawson was named CCO just a few months later in Summer time 2015.
Lawson managed the comms group by means of a interval of nice change. Along with Covid which pressured the whole thing to work distant, your complete senior management modified in the course of the exec’s first couple of years on the job (i.e. Chairman and CEO, Head of Movement Photos, Head of Tv, Head of Networks, CFO all modified). As well as, there was an unlimited restructuring of Sony’s tv networks enterprise. “Reimagine SPT” efforts divested unprofitable worldwide networks, which went from over 100 channels to now about 30. Whereas streaming, notably throughout Covid, would up-end your complete leisure business, Sony remained steadfast to its theatrical distribution enterprise, changing into an arms supplier of movie and TV content material, whereas its rivals invested billions in their very own respective OTT providers a lot to the dismay of debt.
Right here’s Vinciquerra’s observe:
Expensive Colleagues,
I’ve some vital management information to share.
Robert Lawson, who has led SPE’s company communications operations for the final 9 years, has been promoted to SVP, in command of Company Communications for Sony Group Company. On this new position, Bob might be based mostly in Tokyo and report on to SGC Chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.
Bob grew to become Chief Communications Officer for SPE in 2015 after working in New York Metropolis politics and authorities and as a communications guide for a number of main firms, together with Sony Company and Sony Company of America. As CCO, Bob has performed an integral position on our senior management group, overseeing our world communications operations throughout all SPE’s strains of enterprise, and offering invaluable strategic recommendation and counsel at a time of extraordinary change at SPE and all through our complete business.
Arriving within the wake of the 2014 cyber-attack, Bob rapidly unified SPE’s then disparate communications capabilities right into a tightly built-in group of excellent communications professionals who hold SPE’s successes, aggressive benefits, company path and priorities prime of thoughts amongst our most vital stakeholders. Whether or not reinforcing SPE’s ongoing dedication to theatrical distribution or our place because the business’s main impartial “arms supplier” within the streaming wars, or selling our strategic investments in new development areas, or conserving our world staff linked in the course of the pandemic, Bob’s sensible and strategic method to inside and exterior communications and robust management has made SPE CCOM an important half our general enterprise methods and a key contributor of a few of our best successes of the final decade.
Bob has all the time maintained a robust, collaborative working relationship with SGC management and throughout our Sony sister firms, so this promotion is hardly stunning. And his appointment to the SGC management group displays the rising significance of the US-based leisure firms to SGC’s general enterprise.
The official begin date for Bob’s new position might be April 1, however we won’t be dropping him so rapidly. He’ll stay LA-based, part-time in his present SPE position for a minimum of the subsequent few months as we transition to new management in our communications operations.
I need to thank Bob for his years of dedication to SPE and for being such a trusted accomplice to me and to our complete management group. We look ahead to working with him in his new position in Tokyo.
Please be a part of me in congratulating Bob and wishing him continued success!
Tony Vinciquerra
