News UK promotes Nicole O’Shea to Manchester ad sales chief in regional restructure
News UK has promoted Nicole O’Shea to the role of head of sales for Manchester as part of a regional restructure.
The news group, which rebranded from news International this summer, has promoted Nicole O’Shea as head of ad sales for Manchester, reporting to regional sales director Liz Perkins who was promoted to her role earlier this year.
O’Shea’s remit will include driving cross-platform ad sales for the entire News UK newspaper and magazine portfolio, which includes The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times. She will also be responsible for exploring and creating new commercial initiatives across online, print, tablets and smartphones.
O’Shea joined News UK Commercial in 2008 as trade head at The Irish News of the World, and became sales manager at The Irish Sun in 2010.
The news follows the promotion of Karen Sinclair as head of ad sales at news UK’s Glasgow office In June, and David Monaghan as head of ad sales in Dublin. All three report in to regional sales director Liz Perkins.
Speaking to The Drum Perkins said the senior management hires signal the publisher’s aim to mirror the structural changes made by its agency partners.
“We want to be structured in a less siloed fashion to ensure we can match where our agencies have moved to – a more multiplatform, cross-discipline approach.
“We don’t want them to brief more than one person for one thing – we want them to be able to speak to one sales person who can speak authoritatively across all platforms,” she said.
It is recruiting for a regional insight strategy team to help bolster its resources for building commercial opportunities and understanding of local clients’ needs.
Meanwhile it is also in talks with Sky and ITV in Manchester over potential cross-platform tie-ups, which would aim to harness audience segments across all to boost clients’ campaign reach.
“It is a bit of a leap of faith though – so we will be testing a lot and seeing what works but it could result in campaigns that can run across outdoor, TV, print, radio and digital platforms,” she added.
Perkins was previously head of regional transformation at News International Commercial. In her current role she splits her time between all three regional offices, reporting to partnerships director Corinne Wilkins.