Carlton has stamped its mark on its recently acquired cinema sales
house, Cinema Media, by creating a new sales team with a strong Carlton
TV sales background, and is now set to overhaul the way cinema is sold
to advertisers.
Debbie Chalet, formerly commercial account director at Carlton UK Sales,
the TV sales house which handles both the Carlton and Central ITV
regions, joins Cinema Media as sales director. Chalet has 18 years of TV
airtime sales experience, including spells at Thames and Granada
Television.
Chalet fills the gap left by the departure of Katrina Hill in September
this year. Hill, who was sales director, quit after it was announced
that Adam Poulter would be taking over as managing director of Cinema
Media.
Peter Barrett, an account manager at Carlton, takes on the mantle of
sales controller. Barrett has also worked at the National Magazine
Company, the Economist and Capital Radio.
Jane Rumsey, who has also been with Carlton on the client sales side,
takes over a similar role at Cinema Media.
Adam Poulter, managing director of Cinema Media, said that the hirings
were ‘a major coup’.
The restructured Cinema Media sales team will now work closely with
Carlton UK Sales.
The team is expected to introduce a new way of selling airtime on cinema
screens, focused on audience delivery rather than specific films.
The introduction of more robust cinema admissions data from the research
company, EDI, which provides box-office information to film
distributors, means that cinema sales can now be brought more in line
with the way other media are sold.
The EDI data is expected to show that Cinema Media accounts for 84 per
cent of audience admissions, compared with 16 per cent for Pearl and
Dean.
The sales restructure is likely to be timed to coincide with the
introduction of a new name and identity for the company, which is
expected to adopt the Carlton name in the new year.
