Theatrical, streaming and games launch in completely different ways. So why do most teams run them all the same way?
Most global marketing teams are running today's releases on a way of working that was built for a much simpler world. Fewer markets. Fewer formats. One big launch moment.
That world has gone. For most teams, the process behind it hasn't.
Theatrical releases rarely land everywhere at once. A film might open in the US first, the UK a week later and other countries weeks or months after that. Each date is its own small launch. The pressure is keeping track of it all as plans shift from one country to the next.
Streaming works the other way. A series goes live in every market at the same moment, because anyone can watch it anywhere. There's no second market to learn from. Everything has to be ready at once, and any mistake goes live everywhere at once too.
Many teams now handle more than one of these. Most try to run them all through the same process.
When the way of working doesn't match how a release actually runs, people fill the gaps. Extra calls. Extra spreadsheets. Someone who knows where everything is and holds it together.
That can work for years. It stops working when the volume goes up, a key person is away, or a date that can't move meets a problem nobody spotted. Then it shows up as delays, the wrong version going live, or a title that looks different from one market to the next.
Teams that rebuild around how releases work today tend to find something unexpected. The pressure doesn't disappear, but it becomes manageable.
A same-day global launch becomes a chance to approve once for every market, instead of a risk to survive. A staggered theatrical release becomes a chance to learn from the first markets and improve the later ones. The differences between release types stop being a source of chaos and start being something you plan for.
The answer is rarely to work harder. The teams we've worked alongside already work incredibly hard. The answer is a way of working that fits the releases you have now, not the ones you had ten years ago.