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AAPRC Weekly: Toni Thompson

Toni Thompson
Public Relations and Events Consultant
Telecast Publicist, The Academy Awards
Los Angeles CA

Each year around this time the entertainment industry’s media machine shifts into high gear and prepares for the annual, glittering highspeed caravan known as Award Show Season.

Every professional peer group, media outlet and coffee klatch from coast to coast offers an opinion on which actor did what best (or worst), and holds some sort of ceremony to mark the occasion. Year after year, increasing numbers of these moments are beamed via cable or satellite into your living room. There’s the “People’s Choice,” some teenagers’ choices and MTV’s choices. The Foreign Press gives out awards; the fill-in-the-blank-withyour-ethnicity press gives out awards. Bloggers, on-line magazines, film critics, Jews, Christians, witches and dog-lovers. Everybody’s got a gleaming trophy to hand out, but nobody does it better –– or certainly nobody’s done it for as long –– as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.® The Academy Awards.® The Oscars.® The great-granddaddy of award shows.

Several hundred million people around the world watch the Academy Awards telecast each year, an audience bonanza that can be attributed in part to Toni Thompson. For the past six years, this independent, Los Angeles-based publicist has been the conductor who oversees the thunderous chorus of media coverage surrounding the annual Oscars telecast. In addition to generating pre-show coverage nationally and internationally, Thompson also serves as an event spokesperson, organizes press junkets and special programs and coordinates media for the galaxy of stars that orbit the show. Believe it or not, she does it all in conjunction with a skeleton crew, just Thompson and three other Academy staffers who handle other aspects of PR. It’s challenging work, but Thompson loves it, especially since it’s given her the opportunity to achieve a career milestone –– working with the Queen of All Media: Oprah.

“Two years ago we started moving on doing something with the Oprah show,” says Thompson. “We now do two shows that have become huge successes…one that leads up to the Oscars, and then a show right after the Oscars where she’s [Oprah] actually on the same set and the same stage the Oscars were on the night before. It’s not easy…there are very lovely people at Oprah, but it’s a large organization that’s very used to getting what they want. The Academy is a large organization that’s used to getting what it wants. And there’s a producer too, who has his own ideas. I’m the point person who has to coordinate the varying needs. I have to make sure all three entities are pleased. It’s challenging, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”

Not only can Thompson juggle Oprah and the Academy, she can juggle the Oscars and half a dozen other major award telecasts and music festivals. The busy publicist works the Essence Music Festival and the Essence Awards; the Vibe Awards and the 2005 inaugural Vibe MusicFest; the BET Awards, the BET Comedy Awards and the recent BET 25th Anniversary Celebration. Additionally, as an entertainment PR consultant to TeamOne, the Saatchi and Saatchi-owned PR firm that handles publicity for Lexus, Thompson coordinates media coverage for the automaker’s presenting sponsorships, including a celebrity golf tournament, fashion show (a fundraiser for Breast Cancer research), and the current Paul McCartney tour. “I spend about six months out of the year on the Oscars, so they occupy a lot of my time,” Thompson explains. “Fortunately, Essence and Vibe tend to be summer events…but the Academy Awards, which takes most of the winter, has been the event that put me on the playing field.”

Thompson started her career in film publicity in 1989 (fresh out of California State University, Northridge with a degree in Communications), when she landed at Twentieth Century Fox as an assistant to the director of publicity. She worked the assistant track for the next four years in the national and international publicity and production departments. “At the time I thought I wanted to stay at Fox my entire career and work my way up to be vice president of publicity,” Thompson recalls. “I worked film and I loved it.”

Then her boss left, went to MGM/United Artists and took Thompson along, promoting her to publicist. As manager of West Coast publicity for the studio, Thompson worked on campaigns for hit films such as “Golden Eye,” “The Bird Cage,” “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Get Shorty.” For two years life was golden, but a sudden regime change left Thompson out of a job. She spent the next couple years wondering if her career in entertainment PR was over for good. She even did a brief stint at an insurance company –– and hated it. Then a friend called her about a freelance project at New Line Cinema. “People had said to me in the two years previous that I should start my own business, do this independently,” says Thompson. “I’d said oh, I can’t do that. I’m terrified. How would I start?”

She would start with the New Line project. Thompson worked the campaign for a slate of films New Line hoped to get Academy Award recognition for. The project renewed Thompson’s faith in her ability to succeed in entertainment. After New Line she answered a blind ad in the Hollywood Reporter. “It sounded like it had something to do with the Academy Awards, and I thought it was another Academy Awards campaign,” says Thompson. “I sent my resume and their response to me was: we have another job that we think you’re qualified for. That was how I got the job with the Academy.”

It was a turning point for the reluctant entrepreneur. She’d always thought she’d spend her career as an executive at an entertainment or communications company, and had no plans to start her own business. After that first Academy Awards show in 2000, though, Thompson made sure the Academy knew she wanted to return to the project the next year. “I started telling myself, while I’m at the Academy I want to make connections. That’s how I found out about [the BET opportunity],” says Thompson.

She also learned that the PR firm Bragman, Nyman, Cafarelli had landed an account with ESSENCE magazine, but the publication said the firm needed an African-American publicist on the team. “I happened to be in the right place again, at the right time saying the right things,” says Thompson. “It was really BET and then ESSENCE that were my next two big clients.”

These days Thompson still works mostly from home when she’s not at the Academy, and brings in three or four people to assist on projects as needed. Her mind is on expansion, though. “I am happy with where things are, but I realize I can’t continue to do this at this speed by myself,” says Thompson of her plans for the future. “I’m getting older and it’s a lot of physical work, what I do. Orchestrating the red carpet…it’s very physical, not too mention time consuming. I realize that I have to be able to delineate this work, grow the business and to take on larger roles. So, I’m talking to other people about coming on board and opening an office on the West Coast.”

In the meantime, Thompson enjoys the single life, spending her down time with her live-in boyfriend and family, watching movies and walking and jogging on the beach near her home in Marina del Rey. “I’m lucky, I know I’m lucky. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. Not to take away from myself at all, because obviously when you get a job or project you have to produce or people won’t have you back. But I’m just continually amazed that I get to do this,” says Thompson of her career so far. “I think it’s important that what people take away from their lives or what they learn is that sometimes you have to be willing to roll with the punches. I wasn’t happy about the things that happened to me when I lost my job, but something better was in store for me, something I might not have chosen on my own. The result has been that I’m an independent person. I have my own business. If you had asked me if ever that would have happened I would have said no, that’ll never happen.”

AAPRC’s Mission
The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development––updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment––but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

As we move into the 21st century at lightning speed, mass media and its potent messages occupy an ever-larger part of our daily lives and our collective psyche. The AAPRC is focused on helping our members gain a deeper understanding of media’s force and supporting their growth as powerful participants in the global communications network.

AAPRC’s Contact
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New York NY 10019
1212 765 7910
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By Gwendolyn Quinn on 2/13/2006[read on] [2 comments]

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