News

News Limited announces sales restructure

Tony Prentice: leading News Australia - Sales

The dramatic moves at News Limited under new boss Kim Williams have continued, with the company announcing a merger of the sales teams across its newspaper and digital products.

The new operation, called News Australia – Sales will be led by Tony Prentice.

The move – understood to have already been underway before the arrival of Williams – will not surprise the market, with News already having a key accounts team working across both parts of the business for the last couple of years. A further signal of the two parts of the company moving closer together came when News Digital Media boss Richard Freudenstein was also made CEO of The Australian.

The pre-Australia Day announcement comes at the end of a tumultuous few days at News. Last week saw Sandra Hook depart as CEO of lifestyle and magazine arm NewsLifeMedia. And this week corporate affairs chief Greg Baxter also moved on. Meanwhile rumours first published by Crikey yesterday suggested that group marketing boss Ed Smith was set to move to Foxtel which is now headed by Freudenstein. Nicole Sheffield was tipped to move in the other direction to News.

Today’s announcement:

News Limited’s director of sales Tony Kendall today announced the establishment of News Australia – Sales, a fully integrated national sales service offering seamless solutions across the Group’s newspapers, newspaper magazines and digital products.

Mr Kendall also announced that News Australia – Sales will launch in March and will be led by Tony Prentice as chief commercial officer.

News Australia – Sales

News Limited’s national metro masthead sales team, Newsnet, News Inserted Magazines’ sales team and News Digital Media’s sales team will come together to form News Australia – Sales. The NSW teams will co-locate into a single office in the coming weeks.

Mr Kendall said “The creation of News Australia – Sales will mean a better outcome for our national clients and customers, who will be offered audience-led solutions across print, online, tablet and mobile and will have a single point of contact to reach the depth and breadth of our mass audience.”

“The teams at Newsnet and News Inserted Magazines do a fantastic job in representing our newspapers and their magazines to our major customers. Equally NDM have positioned themselves as a leader in innovation in digital sales.

“As the marketplace seeks more integrated solutions, the combination of these great sales teams will ensure our customers receive the best service and creative solutions.

“It was News Limited who led the way in this space with the formation of Australia’s first fully integrated key account team two years ago. The learnings from that highly successful trial have given us a deep understanding of customer requirements which will now benefit all our national advertisers.

“In addition we are making a substantial investment in insights, research and strategy to equip our sales professionals with the ability to help our customers meet their demands in this challenging market.

“The sales proposition for News Limited has never been more compelling. Our news content reaches more Australians than ever before across print, digital and mobile. In particular our reach of women is unparalleled with brands like taste.com.au, body+soul, Sunday and Kidspot all being market leaders.”

Source: News Limited press release

NewsLifeMedia, News Limited’s lifestyle and magazines arm, is outside the scope of the new operation.

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