GWR has announced details of its sales house, which will launch on
1 January.
Opus, as the operation will be called, will be headed by the managing
director, Duncan George, who is currently GWR’s national sales
director.
The sales house will sell advertising for all of GWR’s 40 radio
stations, with the exception of Classic FM, which is sold separately by
a team that has also been beefed up this week by the sales director,
Giles Howard.
The stations sold by Opus were previously represented by the
Capital-owned Media Sales & Marketing, which announced its disbandment
as a result of the possible merger between Capital and Virgin.
Peter Charlton, the national sales controller of GWR, will be the sales
controller of Opus, and will be responsible for four teams - two agency
teams, a client team and a sponsorship team - each comprising eight
executives.
Rupert Garrett, who joins from BBJ Media Services, Kerry Wilkinson,
Steve Cray and Dominic Barker, will be the group heads of each team,
respectively.
George said: ’Clients just want it to be easier to trade in radio. It
would have been more efficient and cost-effective to have one team
selling across GWR’s stations and Classic, but our customers all wanted
us to operate through two separate teams.’
Meanwhile, Howard has revamped the sales department at Classic, creating
at least ten new jobs, including two senior management positions. The
main thrust of the overhaul will be to merge client sales teams with
agency sales teams to create three new teams, each containing three
agency sales executives, two client sales executives and two sales
planners. Each team will be headed by the newly created senior post of
sales manager. One of the sales manager positions will be taken up
internally by Gerry Boniface, a senior agency executive.
The other two are up for grabs.
