Former Nine sales boss Peter Wiltshire is launching an independent advertising sales house, WeThinkMedia, with one of New Zealand's largest independent broadcasters MediaWorks as a foundation client.
The business will be run on a day-to-day basis by head of sales Jane Stucci, who joins from Southern Cross Austereo where she was national television sales director. It will also launch with two full-time sales executives that have worked at MediaWorks.
As founder and director of the business, Wiltshire will provide strategic counsel while continuing to focus on his active consulting and directorship portfolio.
WeThinkMedia holds the exclusive representation rights in Australia for MediaWorks across its television, radio and digital platforms. This includes popular TV channels TV3 and Bravo as well as The Edge, the country's most listened to radio station.
MediaWorks previously ran its own sales team in Australia and WeThinkTV's initial focus will be to bed down the client before looking for new opportunities in the digital space.
"As the digital world is spawning an extraordinary number of publishers from all over, what typically happens is the content publishers will set up a strong content publishing capability and build an audience, but then don't necessarily have the commercial expertise to monetise it effectively," he says.
"We think we are well poised to be able to take on a lot of those independents and if anyone else internationally chose us to service them we would consider that as well. But our primary focus is MediaWorks and then content publishers that are looking for commercialisation."
Stucci will manage operations and client-facing work, with the support of sales professionals Gaylene Riminton and Emma Thomas, who have experience with MediaWorks, to provide continuity of service and a strong basis for growth.
“It’s fantastic to be working with Peter to launch WeThinkMedia and to have MediaWorks as our foundation client," Stucci adds.
“Though I’ve lived in Australia for many years I’m still a passionate Kiwi so am thrilled to share MediaWorks’ extraordinary offer as New Zealand’s largest independent broadcaster with the Australian client and agency market.”
WeThinkMedia, which officially launches after Easter, is in discussions with local and international media platforms that require media representation services.
Wiltshire was recently appointed as non-executive director of digital out-of-home (OOH) company, Medical Channel.
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