Last month, Paramount Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) announced it had expanded its sales leadership team, and created two new divisions under Rod Prosser.
The new divisions include the Paramount ANZ Sales Group led by Nick Bower, and the Paramount ANZ Brand Studio overseen by Michael Stanford.
See Also: Paramount ANZ announces new-look sales team after restructure
With the changes, Bower’s Sales Group becomes a client-focused team that will have a deep understanding of a client’s business and their needs. Around that team will be specialty teams that will provide the insight and detail that the Sales Group team will need to respond appropriately to the client’s needs.
Stanford’s Paramount ANZ Brand Studio will oversee a national team with three pillars led by Namita Sopal, head of advertising strategy, Tamar Hovagimian, head of integration and partnerships, and Rachael Brand, executive producer. This team will fall under the broader umbrella of Paramount branded content, alongside an amplified production arm of that business.
Mediaweek spoke to Prosser (chief sales officer) and Bower (general manager – ad sales) about the new structure and what it means for Paramount’s clients and advertisers.
Photo Paramount ANZ Sales Leadership Team L-R: Michael Stanford, Grant Madigan, Shani Kugenthiran, Rachael Brand, Namita Sopal, Rod Prosser, Nick Bower, Diane Ho, Tamar Hovagimian, Ian Smith.
When asked why the new structure was expanded to include the two new divisions, Prosser and Bower highlight the fact that the changes will make engaging with the Paramount sales team even easier for clients.
Prosser: “We were reviewing our structure and our competitor set and thought, how do we want to really position ourselves so we’re really assisting our clients and meeting their needs? Equally, how do we benefit from being a part of this really wonderful, big global business? So with that, we set about structuring a department that had the client focus, but had ease of extracting information out of the global business.
“Essentially, you will have our activation integration area, a strategy division, and then an amplified production division. They will work with clients on not just television commercials and short-form content, but now long-form content which will find a place somewhere within our ecosystem and our platforms. It’s a unique offering, and one that we’re really excited about.”
Bower: “We have here at Paramount, a business that has evolved so much in the past 18 months, and even beyond that. Our offering is now so different to what it has been traditionally, our competitor set is also different and we recognise that. At the same time, in our team across the country, we have a team of ridiculously talented salespeople. What we wanted to do is identify that, look at that sales group as a whole, and then refocus them and shape them for the future.”
As Bower points out, Paramount is a business that has been busy reinventing itself and refining its product over the last few years, with its offering alongside that. What he now wants potential clients and advertisers to know is that with that evolution – and now the updated sales team – has come opportunity for people partnering with the company.
Bower: “Our business has evolved enormously. We have got audiences in far more places than our traditional competitors, and our business is being reshaped to meet the needs of those clients moving forward. We are focusing a dedicated sales team on being client experts in their business – that’s going to help produce the best results to capitalise on the audiences that we have across all of our different platforms. We think that’s what’s going to give us success into the future.
“Our focus on DE&I here at Paramount is well known, and it’s a really encouraging part of our workforce to actually connect to a business and work for a business that puts such a high focus on that particular area. That energises our sales team and our teams across the board to produce great results. That’s the opportunity we have in front of us.”
The new-look sales team comes after a wider Paramount restructuring, which has seen changes across the business. For Prosser, the process of the restructure has been “really cohesive” across all of the Paramount departments it has impacted.
Prosser: “The industry is transforming, and we’re always looking for ways to improve and meet the market more efficiently. We were really fortunate to have had some outstanding people within the business that we could promote within, and equally, talented people that have the ability to work within those specialist teams. It’s been really seamless, and to be honest with you, the market has really taken to it, as has the broader Paramount team. The sales team are really excited about what the future looks like.”
With a new team and a new energy going forward, Bower says that the goal for the sales team now is to bring the best of what Paramount has to offer to the market in new and engaging ways – especially as the ad market returns to full strength.
Bower: “First and foremost, we’re really excited about the future. The back half of the programming slate and the content pipeline across every aspect of our business is really, really exciting, and our sales team is supercharged to take those opportunities out to market. We’ve got some lofty goals on our team internally, and we want to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of the clients and the market. That’s why we’re reshaping.
“We think the team structure that we’re putting in place at the moment is going to be best served to meet the needs of the market moving forward, and then to capitalise on what we hope will be a more buoyant ad market into the back half. We’ve got an incredible slate of programs, but importantly, it’s also about innovation for us. We want to make sure that we’re continuing to not just provide new platforms, new opportunities, and different audiences, but also different ways for brands and our clients to engage those audiences.”
The impacts of an uncertain time economically have reached every corner of the globe, however Prosser backs up Bower’s hopes of a “more buoyant ad market” and says that the Paramount sales team are looking forward to a brighter conclusion to the year.
Prosser: “There’s no question that as we walked into this year, it presented some challenges, but we had been seeing those from late last year. That really comes down to consumer sentiment, more than anything else. Of course, there’s fragmentation, across all sectors and ours is no different – but ultimately, consumer sentiment plays a lot into how the ad market reacts.
“I can sit here now today and say that we’re pleased with what the forwards are starting to look like, and there really are some green shoots – not just in market behaviour, but we can see it directly in terms of revenue. So yes, there are some challenging headwinds that we have to face, and I think they will continue across this quarter. But certainly, the second half is looking really positive.”
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Top Image: Nick Bower and Rod Prosser