Mike Benson
President & Chief Marketing Officer, CBS
Mike Benson is President and Chief Marketing Officer of CBS, a role he assumed in September
2019.
Benson is responsible for all CBS marketing activities, including brand, advertising, promotion,
creative, social media, experiential marketing and promotional events across CBS Entertainment,
CBS News, CBS Sports, CBS Media Ventures, CBS digital, and studio marketing for CBS Studios,
Paramount Television Studios, BET Studios and See it Now Studios. He works closely with
Paramount+ and Paramount Global Distribution coordinating brand and marketing efforts with
those groups.
Benson and his team are responsible for all marketing activities that have introduced popular
new hit shows to the CBS brand including “Ghosts” and “Fire Country,” and continue to build and
grow TV legends across our linear and streaming platforms including “60 Minutes,” “Survivor,”
“NCIS”, and the “NFL on CBS.” In the Fall of 2020, his team unveiled an evolved look and feel for
the iconic brand as part of a first-of-its-kind strategy to unify the CBS brand identity across
Entertainment, News and Stations, Sports, Studios, Media Ventures (the Company’s first-run
syndication business) and CBS digital platforms. This brand innovation reinforced the continuity
and clarity from the core brand to the subsidiary brands while driving attribution for CBS’ content,
whether on the brand’s platforms or others – live, on demand or streaming.
Previously, Benson was Head of Marketing at Amazon Studios. He led marketing efforts in
support of Amazon Original Content, exclusively for Prime Video. He and his team launched and
marketed a wide range of adult, sports and children’s programming, including series such as “The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” “The Man in the High Castle,” “Homecoming,”
“Thursday Night Football,” “The Boys” and others. His work at Amazon was recognized with Ad
Week’s Brand Genius and Grand Brand Genius Awards, 37 Clio Awards, including two Grand Clios,
five Cannes Lion Awards and an Emmy nomination.
Prior to Amazon, Benson was Chief Creative Officer for the Time Warner Global Media Group. In
this role, he executed a wide range of innovative partnerships with brand marketers across the
Time Warner corporate portfolio, including HBO, Warner Bros., Time Inc. and Turner Networks.
Benson also spent over 12 years at the Walt Disney Company, serving as Executive Vice President,
Marketing, for the ABC Entertainment Group. He oversaw all marketing and promotional
activities for primetime, late night and ABC Studios programming, creating a host of globally
executed and highly recognized marketing campaigns for scripted and non-scripted series,
specials, movies and mini-series, including “Modern Family,” “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives,”
“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Bachelor.”
Benson started his career at CBS, working in various positions at WCCO-TV/Minneapolis, and later
serving as Director of Communications and Director of Creative Servicesfor KCBS-TV/Los Angeles.
He later worked at VH1/MTV Networks, serving as Senior Vice President, Promotion & Program
Planning.
Married to actress Rebecca Budig and a father of three, Benson resides in Los Angeles.
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Mike Benson