Bauer merges sales teams ahead of Nick Chan’s arrival
Di Santo in charge of new sales structure
Bauer’s newly appointed director of sales, Fiorella Di Santo, has made her first major move since taking on the role at the publisher by merging the print and digital sales teams into a single unit.
The move comes just weeks ahead of newly-appointed CEO Nick Chan taking the reins of the company from interim CEO Andreas Schoo.
The restructure of sales follows a review of the print and digital sales teams at both Bauer and Bauer Xcel Media.
Surprising no one.
How many sacked?
Show me the data that demonstrates a need for integrated magazine and digital audiences & buys? The crossover between the 2 mediums is minimal and therefore the integration of the 2 is a purely an internal focus, not a customer one. When are traditional publishers going to adapt and deliver what the market wants!
There’s plenty out there highlighting that the strategy is the most valuable part of the process – integration SHOULD promote an approach that preferences the most appropriate execution – whether it be traditional (Print? Events? Tip Ons?), digital, or (most likely) both.
Having 2 silo’d departments focusing on their own platforms seems protectionist rather than logical to me?
Because it worked so well for her, Kim and co at News? Better cross team collaboration, rather than integrated individuals, is the best way to maintain high service levels for agencies and clients – who care little for individuals being able to sell everything in one conversation. I understand the argument from a salary cost perspective, but in reality, cross media integration does not work. Inevitably, high resources mediums like digital get marginalised as they still represent lower proportions of a sales team’s budget, and therefore receive less operational attention from the business. And lets not even talk about the inefficacy of traditional print reps selling digital to increasingly savvy agency buyers. Its a dogs breakfast.
I used to work in a company where they deliberatly separated the sales and print division for good reason…. very different thinking (Age, background, experience, legacy issues) between the two and it worked really well. What happened in the end was digital integrating print solutions (quite simple to ad) to digital packages.
I still remember the print and TV guys at the company laughing…. lets chat ad some banners and buttons to the your traditional campaign…hahaha….. karma.
And what exactly is it that the market wants, oh one that thinks people that read print don’t then also read digital?