Fairfax has revealed a new commercial strategy for 2018 that sees category specialists head up sales teams for its 10 core advertising segments.
The four biggest teams will be around the key verticals of banking and finance, travel and tourism, auto and retail, which are Fairfax’s strongest ad revenue drivers. Up to 12 staff will work in each team.
Other verticals, such as tech and telco, sport, food and drink, government, luxury and and entertainment, have been identified as growth areas for the business and will have smaller teams.
In the past, Fairfax structured its commercial team around media agency groups, with a team for GroupM or Dentsu media agencies for instance, or around direct clients.
Fairfax chief revenue officer Matt Rowley proudly states there has been no redundancies made as part of the restructure, instead he has added 11 new roles.
“What we are finding is that the world has changed and that has impacted what clients want from us,” Rowley says.
“Clients want more integration and better solutions and making that happen in the old fashioned way of working through an agency [team] doesn’t work so well.
“The agency model worked when it was just straight ads but anything more complicated than that is really difficult because you experience Chinese whispers.”
As part of the new structure, Chris Nardi has come on board as director of business verticals, joining from the Financial Times in London, where he was global advertising director of luxury and consumer.
The verticals will be split between Nardi and Michael Grenenger, who is currently group advertising director.
Chris Nardi has joined Fairfax
Rowley, who began his role in April this year, says the new model is a “complete change” and that media agencies have been open to the new model, recognising it’s a better way to drive results for all parties involved.
Fairfax will still have an agency team to guide conversations outside the 10 key verticals, such as rate negotiations and viewability standards.
Former Volvo CMO Oliver Peagam has joined as head of auto to drive the performance in the vertical. Rowley says there are more high calibre hires to come across travel, retail and finance, which will be announced shortly.
Commenting on the significant hire of Peagam, Rowley says the auto category is worth “tens of millions of dollars” to Fairfax and it is looking to build the teams with specialists in the key verticals.
The new commercial structure follows the creation of Project Blue, a commercial innovation team which was put together earlier this year. It's made up of developers, project management and commercial content creators.
Rowley worked on the development of Project Blue out of Surry Hills, separate from Fairfax's Pyrmont offices, to strategise how to move Fairfax away from its legacy systems and into the new world order.
He says the commercial restructure is fundamental to “unlocking growth” for Fairfax and will take its commercial partnerships to the “ultimate level”.
Other moves initiated by Project Blue include the rebrand of the Brisbane Times and simplified ad units, which Rowley says are delivering close to 80% viewability.
The site rebrand will roll out across the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in coming weeks, with a new site to be launched for the AFR in mid-2018.
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