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Ten launches commercial creative division Generate headed by Kylie Rogers

Rogers, left, will head up Generate as p[art of the restructure masterminded by Barrett, right

Rogers, left, will head up Generate as part of the restructure masterminded by Barrett, right

Generate will replace Ten’s previous cross-platform offering Connect with a wider offering covering branded entertainment, content creation, experiential marketing, sponsorships, talent engagement and activations. Rogers has pledged that Generate will deliver work for clients as creative as the ads seen on the Superbowl.

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The launch sees Melissa Fein – previously head of entertainment and sports partnerships at media agency Mindshare – join the operation as national director. Also in the role of national director is Aaron Quirk who previously headed up Connect.

The operation follows a similar thought process to Nine’s branded entertainment offering Powered by Nine and Seven’s SMG Red.

The creative director of the operation is Michael Stanford, who joined the organisation earlier this year from an agency background including being ECD of GPY&R.

DMG Radio, which is owned by Ten’s chairman Lachlan Murdoch, will remain the network’s preferred partner for cross platform projects.

Barrett – who joined the organisation from Bauer earlier this year, told Mumbrella that the creation of Generate recognised that TV networks had not changed their sales structures for three decades. Changes at Ten have included the launch of secondary channels One and Eleven. Barrett said: “The free to air sales network area as we know it, essentially hasn’t changed in over 30 years. Yet you’ve now you’ve got two multichannels and convergant media coming down the track. We are restructuring our team to go from being TV experts to screen experts.”

As Ten announced earlier this month, day-to-day trading will be run from a separate trading team led by Rod Prosser. Client service is now being run by Kelly Healy.

Rogers said that Generate would build on the work of Connect: “It’s not starting again, in essence we will be about brand story-telling. We are passionate about great content and inspired by powerful insights.

“For advertisers and agencies, Generate represents a new way to access our assets and work with Ten to create content that can be amplified.”

Challenged whether Ten’s in-house team would be capable of making ads as good as those from a creative agency, Rogers said: “I look forward to surprising you. Think about the Superbowl and the creativity we see within that. We want to be known .”

Barrett said that she felt that sentiment in the market was supportive of Ten, which has been through a miserable year of ratings slump and staff upheaval. She said: “I’m feeling very positive about the last quarter.”

Tim Burrowes

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