Ed Smith, Foxtel's top marketer, is the latest guest on the AANA Marketing Dividends series. Smith, who also heads up the sales function, talks collaboration, driving demand and converting it into growth.
Foxtel is currently embroiled in an audit with media agency group GroupM after irregularities were identified on its media buying account at MediaCom last month. Foxtel has since switched its media account to sister agency Mindshare.
Smith, and Foxtel director of information services David Marks, also feature in the AdNews Annual Photo Essay and shed light on the close and connected relationship between the two execs, and their divisions. You can download The Annual 2014 iPad edition to read it now.
Watch the AANA Markeitng Dividends highlights here, or the full episode below. You can also watch the episode on the AANA website here.
Smith talks about the ‘finely balanced harmonised set of investments’ that Foxtel adjusts and readjusts to get the most effective outcome.
"Our whole process from driving demand, converting the demand into acquisition and then retaining the customer is all contained within the one sales and marketing business unit. That is really the customer growth engine," Smith said.
"Nobody owns the customer at Foxtel. Marketing is often the place where you get customer service, sales, engineering, product development and television all coming together to work out what’s the next story we want to tell, and the next perception that we want to shift. It is more a collaboration, a facilitation, than external storytelling, through the marcomms."
He added: "The role in our company that contemporary marketing can play is we don’t have all the answers, life’s too complicated now. But we can facilitate a process of collaboration that brings together all the other parts of the business. That will create something that the customers will value."
Marketing Dividends is a joint initiative between the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) and MEC Global. The series has been produced in partnership with MCN and Sky News. It is presented by MEC chief strategy officer James Hier.
Previous AANA Marketing Dividends episodes have featured:
Marketing Dividends: Virgin Mobile's David Scribner on AANA TV
Marketing Dividends: Lion Australia's Matt Tapper on AANA TV
Lollback: if marketing isn’t part of the c-suite it needs a re-brand
Marketing Dividends Episode Five: Marketing Academy
Marketing gets its own TV show: AANA partners Sky News
Watch the full Ed Smith episode below.
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Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop me a line at rosiebaker@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day. Need a job? Visit adnewsjobs.com.au.