Alan Dark has been hired for a newly created position at Rogers Media. Beginning May 26, the sales veteran will be the vice-president, national sales at the company.
The announcement was made by Rogers Media chief sales officer Jack Tomik on Tuesday.
Alan Dark
In an interview with Marketing, Tomik said the new position is part of the sales restructure he implemented last May that reorganized Rogers’ sales teams to make the company more nimble and provide more holistic advertising solutions for clients.
In his new role, Dark will remain based in Toronto and will be using a ‘OneCall strategy’ to boost advertising revenue. As Tomik explained, that strategy is about having empowered Rogers sales leaders who can speak on behalf of all of the assets.
To that end, Tomik has recently hired two other senior sales leaders: Brad Kubota and Paul Lafleur, who now oversee Rogers Media’s sales efforts in Western Canada and Eastern Canada, respectively. Dark will be responsible for Toronto, a key advertising market for Rogers.
Dark will be steering strategy for Rogers Media’s national sales teams, which include sports, specialty and five national agency teams.
The sales veteran has a lot of experience with leading multiple teams. In his current role at CBC, he is general manager of the Revenue Group. That position has seen him lead teams from sales and marketing to licensing and digital. He has been in that position since 2012, before which time he’d been executive director, sales and marketing at CBC. He was instrumental in CBC/Radio-Canada’s sales and broadcast coverage strategy for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.
The timing was right to bring Dark onboard at Rogers, said Tomik, not only because he had finished with the Olympics and did “a great job of selling that for CBC,” but also because “as the next weeks and months unfold and NHL goes higher up on our radar screen, people who’ve got NHL experience are going to be helpful to us.”
Dark has a sales background in broadcast and digital media that spans more than 16 years. He has held a series of senior sales roles over his career, which has included stints at CTV and Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting.
Tomik also came to Rogers Media from CBC when he stepped into his role in late 2012. Tomik’s last role at CBC was the same one that Dark will be leaving.
Disclosure: Rogers owns Marketing and MarketingMag.ca
