Man of Many’s sales team is Mediaweek‘s February winner as part of the Sales Team of the Year initiative.
In 2023, Mediaweek launched Sales Team of the Year to highlight some of the high-quality work done in the industry.
Each month, a media sales team is selected by a rotating panel of judges as the nominee for that particular month, culminating in a final set of nominees by the end of the 12 months. The judges will be assessing each team on criteria such as proactivity, strategy and execution, and client and agency relationship management.
The nominees will then all go into the running to be named Mediaweek’s Sales Team of the Year.
See Also: Mediaweek’s Sales Team of the Year: NSW shines for News Corp Australia
Mediaweek caught up with Man of Many commercial director, Elliott Barsby.
Barsby has been at Man of Many for about 18 months, making the move from News Corp’s Medium Rare. He tells Mediaweek that he “joined the team with the view of looking to grow the sales opportunities and the sales team at Man of Many.”
“Over the past year, the things I’m most proud of are really diversifying the offerings that we can put forward to our clients. We are Australia’s largest men’s lifestyle publisher, we see fantastic results in traffic through to our sites. Content packages, display campaigns and the like are our bread and butter, but we’re really looking to put forward new opportunities and diversify our offerings to clients.”
Elliott Barsby
These expanded offerings include events such as working with the NBC Universal team to bring the film Argylle to life at its Sydney premiere, and content creation in the form of photography and videography.
“We’ve had a few of our video campaigns nominated for some international film awards in recent months. It makes my job so much easier when you’ve got fantastic products to put out there.”
Barsby said the key to the team’s results lies in “really listening to our audience and knowing what they are after” from the Man of Many brand.
“We work very hard on the back end analysing search trends and making sure that when producing content, we know we’re not just putting content up for the sake of it, but producing content we know he’s going to engage with our audience.”
Barsby also pointed to having the trust of clients as a major factor in retaining clients. He made the point that a major focus for the team is not necessarily just doing the same thing year in and year out, but really understanding the client’s needs.
“In my opinion, our campaign reporting is best in class, we are very open and transparent with our numbers and our reporting. Being predominantly digital, we have access to all of those really fine details in terms of how a campaign is performing, and we are very, very transparent in communicating that with our clients,” Barsby said.
“That helps build trust. If a campaign is doing really well, we’re very quick to celebrate that with the client. If it needs to be tweaked and adjusted, we are very quick to share that and give reasoning as to why we might be now prioritising other components of the campaign to make sure that it is hitting the mark.”
Looking ahead, there is one clear north star that Barsby and the Man of Many sales team are working towards.
“Moving forward, I really want to look to solidify Man of Many’s presence in the market. Our goal is to become a household name, not just within men’s lifestyle publishing, but publishing in general.”