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National Director
Branded Partnerships and Curated Content Sales
 
The Client Company
One the world’s largest digital publishers with US | LATAM | EU | MENA and ASIA monetization channels for B2B | B2C | C2C.
Summary
As a leading storytelling platform for publishers, brands and advertising agencies to create and distribute engaging content for editorial and commercial use, the firm as of search initiation, has approximately 200M users. There are approximately 15,000 publishers as branded partners in over 55 countries and growing.
The head of The Americas retained Filcro Media Staffing to identify the firm’s next Director of Brand Partnerships to be based in New York City. This Director would be responsible for developing and growing content marketing solutions in the United States. This key hire based out of the firm’s New York City executive offices reports directly into the Head of Sales for North America.
As a senior officer of the firm, the Head of The Americas was aware of Filcro Media Staffing form digital advertising and TV broadcasting executive searches conducted when he was CEO of TV Network as a division of a major media and entertainment conglomerate.
The Director of Brand Partnerships role was defined as a “player / coach” who had substantial revenue generation experience in digital, mobile, and social media sales with a deep understanding of content marketing and native advertising solutions. An extensive network of solid advertising agency and direct client relationships would be required. Mentoring, training, managing and hiring sales staff and sales support would also be part of the new Director's role.
Challenges Facing The New Director
- Enhancing partnerships with US advertisers and advertising agencies to generate increased revenue across four primary industries of interest to the Head of North America.
- Leverage existing B2C relationships to maximize both short and long-term revenue opportunities for B2B and C2C monetization.
- Proactively communicate and strategically respond to marketplace demands by developing a steady pipeline of new business with agencies and direct clients comprised primarily of the Fortune 50-1000
- Create an in-depth knowledge of the competitive landscape and market trends for the sales organization based in New York.
- Creatively package and position the firm in a highly effective manner to meet and exceed revenue goals with enhanced ideation and the use of primary vs. secondary media metrics and analytics.
Industry and Sector Inclusion
- Digital Publishers
- Print Publishers
- Broadcasting and Cable TV Network Digital Properties
- Social Networking with C2C and B2C revenue channels
The Filcro Media Staffing Recruitment Solution
Knowing the culture of the firm’s New York sales organization and the intimate relationships required with primary New York advertising agencies universe compilation was entirely comprised of high-profile Directors and VP’s in the New York market. Aside from new recruits there were also suitable candidates who were apparent from two recent “digital media” sales executive searches for a VP and Director that expedited the initial list of candidate to be screened.
As the role was a player-coach and the head of North America had a history of promoting sales executives with “capaciaty”, it was our goal to identify sales executives who were verbose and able to articulate nuance about the industry and their specific strategic reasoning and the tactical direction they (would) give to staff using a number of scenarios relevant to the current market. Since technology, creative product, business acumen and the capacity to formulate and articulate sales process and work-flow would be required to answer our questions, this a was good starting point utilizing information specific to digital publishing and literal partnerships of two Fortune 50 clients.
While exploring each executive's advertising agency relationships in line with the company’s needs we looked at level, volume and cross-over between the direct client and the agency to understand how this executive managed sensitive and historically territorial relationships. Our goal here was to understand what promoted the executive to determine, “when”, “if”, “how “ the client or the agency was to be the focus of the sales team. And, at what point would a change in modality be required. This was within context of the top 200 advertisers.
Moving on to direct clients we explored prior sales budgets and developing large scale strategic partnerships with Fortune 1000 brands. We concentrated on businesses and industries of interest to the hiring manager and also set a threshold to determine if the “added value” could be a weighting for those outside of the ideal industries based on revenue generation well above the hiring executives goals.
As we honed our list of candidates, the interviewing process became more detailed and the final (6) six candidates were scrutinized for premium brands, marketing and or solutions based selling, evangelizing new concepts and collaborative selling where the sales executive was able to get internal buy-in to bring solutions selling to fruition. This brought our final roster to (3) exceptional candidates.
With all three candidates having the attitude, mentality, approach, cultural fit, revenue in-line with budgets, mentoring, energy level, entrepreneurial spirit, strong negotiating skills and ability to travel as well as everything else reviewed at the beginning of the search we proceeded with differentiating the three executive by exploring (4) four primary areas to help the hiring executive through his internal reviews.
The New National Director of Branded Partnerships
The hiring executive met with all three final candidates and had a difficult time determining who to hire as he greatly liked all three. He articulated that if his budget warranted it, he would have hired two of them.
Ultimately a gifted sales executive from a major media and entertainment conglomerate with a stellar reputation at revenue generation with the Fortune 50-1000 and a history of mentoring and managing sales staff was hired. She not only exceeded the current revenue goals set for the position but she also had the direct client and agency relationships with the “primary” industry targets on a wish list set at the onset of the search.
Currently managing a sales staff of (12) in New York she managed the player / coach role well as a rainmaker and leader of the firms largest and most productive sales group in the United States.
This is an executive who made a difference when she was in a room with an intimate group or as a speaker representing the company's interests at an industry event. With the capacity to work effectively with the most junior to the most senior level executives at the agencies and directly with the the CMO’s of the Fortune 50, she was exceptionally qualified and exhibited the type of characteristics that the hiring executive admired in sales executives he promoted quickly in the past.
The executive became quickly acclimated and has shown a capacity for both domestic and international cross-functional team leadership. This was a highly successful search.
Officer in Charge - Tony Filson | New York
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