After five years with Canwest Broadcasting, Walter Levitt is stepping down as the company’s chief marketing officer at the end of November.
Levitt said that Shaw Communications‘ acquisition of the Canwest assets–CRTC approval of the $2 billion deal could come as early as this week–presented a “natural opportunity” for him to move on.
“When a company is acquired, there are always many different possible routes things can take,” he told Marketing this morning. “I had a very honest conversation with Shaw about the future, and it was clear that with the marketing infrastructure they had and with their views about where they wanted to take the company, there simply wasn’t a role from my perspective that was going to be interesting and immediate enough moving forward.”
Levitt, 43, arrived at Canwest from the former Alliance Atlantis Communications in 2005, and was a central figure in the complete overhaul of its flagship Global Television brand the next year.
He helped develop a number of innovative marketing programs for Canwest brands over the years, including last spring’s one-day makeover of Toronto radio station 103.9 Proud FM as Glee FM to promote the return of Global’s hit show Glee, and a subway domination campaign in which creative was updated daily to reflect that evening’s primetime programming.
“One of the mantras here has been that we always need to bring some ‘Wow’ to the marketing of television,” he said. “We are an entertainment industry and an entertainment product, and our marketing has to reflect that.”
Canwest’s broadcast assets are now “firing on all cylinders,” he said, with a reinvigorated Global Television brand and industry-leading specialty channels. The company has also become a pioneer in the digital space, he said, with all but one of its primetime shows (The Simpsons) now available on GlobalTV.com.
“When a number of us arrived here five years ago, it was really with a mandate of changing and evolving the organization and moving it forward to be a broadcaster of the future,” he said. “Everything we’ve done in that time has positioned us incredibly well.”
Levitt has spent more than 20 years in the media industry and said that it’s “logical” for him to pursue future employment in that sector. An avowed fan of social media–he is on Twitter as TVmktgGuy–Levitt said he would also be open to opportunities within that area.
For now, he said, his kids are excited by the prospect of their father picking them up from school. “I’m open to having conversations, but I’m not in any great rush to jump to the next thing,” he said. “As with anybody in this situation you want to find the right next opportunity, and I’m patient in that regard.”
