2011: A year to say goodbye to Andy Barnes, the COI & the Sunday Sport
Jim Marshall on the changes in TV sales; the cabinet report on the future of the COI (or lack of it); the mystery of the Big Society; and the sad demise of the Sunday Sport… who will forget its brave investigative approach to journalism, which uncovered a World War 2 bomber found on the moon or Lord Lucan spotted on Shergar?
2011 is turning out to be a year when the industry is having to say ‘goodbye’ to a number of high profile individuals and organisations.
The latest announced departure is Andy Barnes, long serving sales director of Channel 4. In fairness and quite rightly so, Andy will be leaving with the upmost dignity and respect.
He took over in the early 1990’s – previously Channel 4 sales had been handled as an adjunct to ITV – and preceded to confound many pundits by delivering a sales performance which far exceeded anything achieved by ITV.
More importantly he achieved a remarkable degree of consistency with Channel 4 over 20 years or so and will leave Channel 4 with a commercial share in TV well in excess of 20%. It was delivering a share in the mid teens when he first took over.
It’s a pity that his great love Arsenal hasn’t had the same quality or consistency of management – a pity for Andy that is, not for the rest of us who have enjoyed Arsenal’s lack of success over the last few years. (Perhaps Andy should offer some of his services to Arsenal in his new role as a consultant?)
Channel 4 is not the only TV company to have changed its sales management. Both the other free to air channels, ITV and Five, have installed new sales teams and, of course, IDS and Viacom closed their sales operations from the end of last year.
So it’s all change in TV sales, apart from BSkyB, which will very probably be restructured when the News International deal, securing full ownership of Sky, is finalised.
Arguably this has been hard on the previous incumbents, who have performed consistently well, while the general management of the TV companies over the last 5/10 (particularly ITV and Five) has been pretty ‘sketchy’ to say the least.
However, having moved from the world of analogue to digital TV, it feels like we are entering a new phase of ‘integrated sales’ and the need for a rather different approach to sales and marketing.
We will also be saying goodbye to the even longer serving COI, which has been around since the end of the Second World War.
The recently published cabinet report has finally put an end to COI (though it feels like it has been death by a thousand cuts) by announcing that it should be replaced by a new Government Communication unit called… the Government Communication Centre (GCC) – not the most inspiring title.
The report talks a lot about targeting, insight, value for money, return on investment and smart use of communications channels, including government owned.
Some years ago it used to be ‘good sport’ to be rude about the COI. The fact is that for many years now the COI has been recognised as delivering outstanding campaigns, delivering highly quantifiable results (they have been consistent winners of IPA Ad Effectiveness Awards), delivering significant media value through a best in market media expertise (comparable with other major advertisers like P&G and Unilever) and delivering top class leadership/management – you could not imagine a more experienced, better qualified or more knowledgeable advertising/communication expert than Mark Lund.
Yes a lot of money was spent by the COI in paid for media, but all of these monies were decided by the government departments (not COI) and smart communication strategists understand that ‘owned’ and ‘earned’ media can only be effectively achieved and leveraged alongside ‘bought’ media.
Maybe there does need to be a new approach to government communications (clearly this government thinks so). However I can’t help thinking that a lot of long serving and loyal employees of the COI, who have significantly improved the results, financial performance and the overall reputation of government communications, have been treated very shabbily.
I guess the ultimate irony was that the cabinet report on the future of COI (or lack of it as it turned out) came at the same time as the announcement that the directors of the publicly owned Royal Bank of Scotland would be getting £28 million in bonuses, which has had a rather different track record of success over the last 5 years or so. Is this another ‘mystery’ of the Big Society, which I’m clearly not intelligent enough to get?
And finally the sad demise of the Sunday Sport (and its daily version). Who will ever forget its brave investigative approach to journalism, which uncovered a World War 2 bomber found on the moon, a boy turned into a fish finger by Martians or, and most impressively of all, Lord Lucan spotted on Shergar? I’m tempted to believe that its closure is just another brilliant hoax, particularly given the date of the announcement, April 1st…