ITV Sales Recruits Third Agency Account Director
ITV Sales has today announced a third key appointment to its advertiser relationships team as part of ongoing attempts to improve its image by becoming more customer-centric.
Maria-Isabel Jassies will join the twelve-strong team at the beginning of September from Mindshare, where she was an account director with responsibility for a number of high-profile clients including Kelloggs. Prior to joining Mindshare, Jassies worked at Zenith for four years.
This latest appointment comes just days after Jane Carroll joined ITV Sales from MediaVest and Alex Plumb defected from McCann Erikson. The trio will form the new face of ITV for the broadcaster’s clients as it attempts to forge closer relationships with advertisers (see ITV Raids Agencies To Bolster Advertiser Relationships Team).
All three former agency account directors have been recruited by Justin Sampson, ITV’s director of customer relationship management, who joined the broadcaster in April after more than a decade at the helm of the Radio Advertising Bureau (see ITV Raids Agencies To Bolster Advertiser Relationships Team).
Sampson said: “Our ambition is to develop stronger relationships with advertisers and to achieve this we must harness account direction skills that have been developed on the customer side with our established experience of talking about the strength of television.”
ITV Sales is also understood to be looking for another senior media industry figure to become Sampson’s right hand man, as head of advertiser relationships, following the departure of Mark Butterfield last week. A number of industry big-wigs are thought to have applied already, with an appointment expected next month.
Earlier this month ITV Sales launched what it claimed is a media first for television by collaborating with Carat and Buena Vista International to create a cross-media sponsorship package including movies and an interview with a Hollywood director (see ITV Creates Cross Promotion First With Movie Tie-In).
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