Nine evolves sales structure to drive cross-platform solutions
Nine has announced the implementation of the final stage of its sales transformation and now has a fully integrated cross-platform structure to create more opportunities for advertisers across its leading television, digital, publishing, radio and data assets.
As part of the changes, Richard Hunwick assumes responsibility for the television and radio sales teams while Nick Young will have the responsibility for Nine’s digital and publishing sales teams, as well as Nine’s data strategy.
The transformation will create Australia’s largest integrated sales team, aligned under a Director of Sales in each state. Paul Brooks (Sydney), Sam Brennan (Melbourne), Rebecca Lawrie (Brisbane), Sean O’Brien (Adelaide) and Clive Bingwa (Perth) will lead Nine’s state-based sales teams across the country.
Under the new structure, Nine’s Group Business Directors (GBDs), who have a range of diverse skills and experience across the marketing and media landscape, will be a single point of contact for all of Nine’s advertising partners. Each GBD will have complete responsibility for a media agency buying group or independent agencies, and lead. The GBD will have responsibility for a television, digital, publishing and a radio sales team who are experts and specialists in their channel
Nine+, led by Tim Rose, will be expanded to create a “super group” focused on helping Australia’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to unlock the power of Nine. Direct sales teams in TV, digital, publishing and radio will align under the Nine+ brand to create a one-stop-shop for small business. The development of 9Voyager, Nine’s self-serve platform, will be fast-tracked to include both radio and podcasts alongside TV and 9Now, putting Nine’s world-class technology in the hands of its direct sales Nine+ team.
“There is no doubt that COVID-19 has impacted our lives and our economy in a way that few if any of us have ever seen” said Michael Stephenson, Nine’s Chief Sales Officer. “However, today’s changes are not driven solely by the impact of the global health crisis on our economy and our industry, rather by the need to create a structure that will allow us to create more innovative marketing platforms for new and emerging categories, to better service the needs of our clients in a more integrated fashion across television, digital, publishing and radio.
“As we navigate ourselves towards the ‘new normal’ there will be enormous opportunity for those that are willing to think differently and challenge the way things have always been done. We are ready. We have the most unique assets, the most senior team, and we now have a fully integrated structure that will make it even easier for our clients to use our content, data and technology to sell more of their products and services.”
Stephenson noted that Nine’s marketing solutions division, Powered, would continue to play a key role supporting the GBD teams, creating “Big Ideas” and delivering bespoke integrated solutions for clients that deliver real business outcomes.
“Our new integrated structure has given our specialists in data, insights, strategy and effectiveness the opportunity to accelerate the development of our data strategy,” he said. “Everything designed to make working with Nine more efficient and even more effective.”
Under the new structure, reporting to Stephenson will be Richard Hunwick, Director of Sales – Television & Radio; Nick Young, Director of Sales – Digital & Publishing; Liana Dubois, Director of Powered; Tim Rose Director of Sales – Nine+ (SME); and Warwick Sharp, Director of Sales Operations.
Chris Nardi moves to the newly created role of Director of Client Partnerships – Publishing, where he will oversee Nine’s team of specialists in key client verticals across travel, luxury, education, recruitment, finance, technology and classifieds. Michael Stephenson explained that Nardi would focus on creating specific opportunities for brands in and around Nine’s mastheads and superbrands including Traveller, Good Food, Domain, Good Weekend and Sunday Life.
“Chris has a unique background in publishing. His passion, experience and insight together with our category experts will be the key to unlocking the opportunities within our publishing brands as advertisers turn to channels and brands they can trust,” said Stephenson.
As part of the changes, Nine confirmed there have been some redundancies within the sales team.Among the departures is Penny Kaleta, Nine’s Director of Sales – Radio who joined Nine to lead the integration of its sales operation following the acquisition of Macquarie Media.
“Penny has been fantastic during her time at Nine. In the short time she has been with us she has fully integrated our radio team into the Nine family and reintroduced Nine radio to the market at large. She has done an outstanding job and she has become a great friend,” Stephenson said.
“I’m very sad that she will be leaving us. Our loss will be someone else’s gain and I can’t wait to see who is lucky enough to have Penny in their team.”
Surely 7 will have something to say about this?
Shots of the new North Sydney building this morning.
From:
The Australian Financial Review, (and presumably The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald?), is moving into the new Nine building in North Sydney in August. More ($):
Nine announces sale of Stuff in management buyout
Nine has today confirmed that it has signed an agreement for the sale of Stuff Limited, in a transaction which is expected to complete by 31 May 2020.
The transaction will be a management buyout with Stuff Chief Executive Sinead Boucher, taking over ownership of the business as it returns to New Zealand ownership.
“We have always said that we believe that it was important for Stuff to have local ownership and it is our firm view that this is the best outcome for competition and consumers in New Zealand,” said Hugh Marks, CEO of Nine.
Sinead Boucher said the transaction gave the business, as a wholly New Zealand owned media business, far greater certainty as it the media industry navigates through the challenging waters of the post COVID-19 ad market.
“Today is an important moment for Stuff as a business,” said Boucher. “It is great to take control of our own future with the move to local ownership and the opportunity to build further on the trust of New Zealanders, who turn to us for local and national news and entertainment every day. We are looking forward to working closely with staff, customers and our audiences as we embark upon what we believe will be a great new era for the business and the independent journalism it is built on.”
Nine acquired ownership of Stuff in 2018 following its merger with Fairfax Media. Part of the proceeds from the recent sale of internet service provider Stuff Fibre will be used to assist Stuff to operate as it settles into its new ownership structure.
Stuff Ltd is a leading publisher operating in New Zealand. It operates the country’s largest news website, Stuff.co.nz, and also owns nine daily newspapers including The Dominion Post and The Press , the highest circulation weekly, Sunday Star-Times and New Zealand social media network Neighbourly.
What’s the article all about, it’s behind a paywall?
The main point is that there are stairs between floors 1-9 where Nine will be, but not from the ground floor to the first floor which means possibly having to wait for a social distancing lift to go up one floor, whereas perhaps they should have extended the internal stairs for Nine down to street level.
I guess that Nine can’t have its own entrance on street level because it doesn’t own the building?
If only Tracy Grimshaw would share that private, secret car park elevator she demanded so she didn’t have to rub shoulders with the peasants of North Sydney.
Just use a cherry picker and let them enter through the windows 
The article is inaccurate - there are stairs leading from the ground floor studio up to the northern end of the newsroom on level 1. These are obviously there for production purposes…but they are stairs nonetheless.
So we can’t trust Nine to accurately report about their own new building. 
I guess the article’s writer, at Nine’s AFR, didn’t actually go there or look at the final plans?
He did go there. It was a review of his visit.
@eddel Would someone be able to walk from the ground floor to the ninth floor?
Yes and no.
They appear to be back of house stairs (ie for access between the studio and the control rooms/dressing rooms above) so won’t be fitted out nicely.
But there are technically stairs there and I’m sure access provisions could be made if absolutely necessary.
There are obviously fire escape stairs in the building, but whether there are more internal stairs is another question.
Ok. The journalist was referring to office stairs that from what he wrote will be available for Nine staff to freely walk between floors. Those stairs you have mentioned would be restricted access, I think.