After less than a year as president and chief operating officer of Zoom Media Canada, Cathy Fernandes is no longer with the Montreal-based digital out-of-home company.
Zoom Media’s chief executive officer, François de Gaspé Beaubien, will oversee the company’s Canadian operations on a day-to-day basis, traveling between the Toronto and Montreal office.
De GaspĂ© Beaubien told Marketing that for the last little while he has been focused on growing the company’s U.S. business. He said he’s looking forward to turning his attention back to Canada and “taking ownership” of his company to fill the role vacated by Fernandes.
“The company belongs to me and I think the world of Cathy but at the end of the day I have to make the call for where we’re going,” he said. “I wanted to take the helm and reinvest in things that make our sales grow.”
“We are evolving and we can’t stay where we were in terms of product offering… and in Canada we’ve offered more and we’ve stayed flat on revenue.”
Fernandes, who has over two decades media experience, joined Zoom Media in August 2011. She has also held VP sales positions at BV! Media and Quebecor Media, and oversaw sales as associate publisher for Marketing until 2006.
Moving forward, de Gaspé Beaubien said Zoom will focus on presenting agency partners with integrated campaign solutions. “We have to integrate and innovate and tie social media into what we do.”
“One of the mistakes we’ve made is you can’t go charging just after digital, you have to build off the strengths you have,” he said, referring to the company’s sampling and experiential offerings in addition to its digital products.
Zoom Media Group owns and operates more than 80,000 billboards across North America and Europe. More than 26,000 of those are digital.
