Media Forum: Will ITV's sales revamp work?

The media owner's sales relaunch must be more than cosmetic.

They say you can't put lipstick on a bulldog, but is that what ITV is trying to do as it relaunches ITV Sales in the softer and more seductive guise of ITV Customer Relations?

With ITV1 predicted to end the year with a 13 per cent decline in revenue, and a 20 per cent drop in the final quarter, the broadcaster clearly needs to do whatever it can to woo advertisers. The restructure, which sees ITV's three sales teams replaced with two departments, one responsible for trading and the other for media planning, is designed to help ITV get involved earlier in the buying process and, as it says, 'to maximise creative solutions' across the ITV portfolio.

However, what does a media owner offering media planning mean? If this is all about ITV trying to think more about its family of broadcast and interactive brands, and being more accommodating to agencies and clients looking for integrated communications solutions, then it might have legs.

Nevertheless, Neil Johnston, the head of TV at OMD UK, is slightly baffled by any broadcaster trying to impress him with their planning expertise: 'We very rigorously plan our media, so will this mean ITV has any more influence over our media planning? No, of course not. I admire that ITV is trying to be more forward-thinking and do things differently, but it is ultimately a sales organisation, so this is about trying to bring in extra money.'

Johnston also says the idea is not even that new: 'Most of the broadcasters already do this in some form - they have specialists who can talk to media planners. As a customer relations role, that's fine, but if they are presenting this as a real planning unit, then they're under-estimating the rigour that we put into the process.'

Chris Locke, the trading director at Starcom, agrees that ITV is not blazing a new trail by offering some form of planning insight, but forgives it for getting the job of restructuring the broadcast and digital offering done first. 'To be fair, ITV has been busy building its digital business, buying Friends Reunited and rebuilding its programming. But it is about time it woke up to a new way of selling its content. It's what we call 'liquid content', moving across platforms. It is how advertisers want to engage.'