Shaw Media is taking back digital sales for its extensive broadcast holdings from the Postmedia Network, establishing a new in-house division headed by veteran sales executive Graeme Mackrell. The transition is effective June 1.
Errol Da Ré, senior vice-president of sales for Shaw in Toronto, told Marketing that when Shaw’s broadcast assets and Postmedia’s print assets operated under the Canwest umbrella, digital sales needed to be housed under either the broadcast or print operations. “For whatever reason it was always under the publishing umbrella,” said Da Ré.
While Shaw and Postmedia will continue to work together after the transition, Da Ré said bringing digital sales in-house would enable Shaw–whose assets include the conventional network Global Television and specialty channels including Food Network and Showcase–to be more nimble and responsive to client needs when assembling ad programs.
“We need to continue the close alignment with our content and programming departments in coming up with programs for advertisers that we can be very flexible with,” he said. “We feel that bringing the digital team in-house will allow us to leverage all the assets and not have to worry about going to a second company.”
Da Ré said Shaw has been considering bringing digital sales back in-house for about a year even though Postmedia was doing good work. “We want get this going so we can talk about it at the up-fronts and start to really incorporate the teams through national and local sales.”
Shaw plans to hire five account executives and five project managers by May 1, enabling it to be ready for the key up-front sales period that commences with the annual presentation of the fall lineup to buyers later that month.
Digital will be a “very big part” of Shaw’s up-front offering to clients this year, said Da Ré. “When we’re going to market and looking to talk to our partners about up-front deals with agencies and clients, digital will be a big part of it.
“It’s no longer an add-on, it’s a mandatory requirement and we really feel we can push the digital side of our business forward with the help of Shaw [Communications] as our new parent company,” said Da Ré, citing developments such as addressable advertising, which uses readily available demographic information such as neighbourhood household income and population make-up to send different ads to digital set-top boxes.
“There are a lot of things we can go to market with that we would probably have had to wait two or three more years, but we can really speed this up with the technology we’re seeing from our parent company,” he said.
New digital sales head Graeme Mackrell has spent 14 years with Shaw Media, most recently as director of its Marketing Ventures unit. Prior to that, he worked with the Synergy unit at Alliance Atlantis.
Mackrell’s first hire is Lyna Sapijonis, who joins the division as manager of digital sales. Sapijonis has spent more than four years working with Shaw’s Marketing Ventures team and before that was VP of interactive for the independent media services company Magi Communications.
Da Ré said today’s announcement would have no impact on integrated marketing programs utilizing both the Shaw and Postmedia assets. “[Postmedia Network EVP advertising sales] Kirk Allen and I meet every once in a while and make sure our teams are really talking to each other on any integrated deals that are coming down,” he said. “If it makes sense to use publishing, whether it’s their digital side or their newspapers, we will go to market with that.”
Digital sales have been the greatest growth area for Shaw in recent years, and Da Ré expects that to continue with increased consumer adoption of devices such as the iPad and iPhone.
Shaw recently introduced a FoodTV app for the iPhone featuring advertiser involvement from the likes of Molson 67 and Colgate Palmolive, while Schick was involved with a Global Television app for the iPad.
Da Ré also said the Shaw’s digital sales team is putting together packages “as we speak” for a Global Television app for the iPhone and iPod set to debut in spring. “We’re moving quickly in this direction,” he said. “We want to have a reputation as [offering] a really unique selling experience in the digital space.”
