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ITV Fru Hazlitt Advertising Week

ITV commercial chief Fru Hazlitt calls on advertisers to "stop moaning and predicting nonsense" when speculating over death of TV

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By Stephen Lepitak, -

March 31, 2014 | 3 min read

ITV's managing director of commercial, online and interactive, Fru Hazlitt has told advertisers to stop "moaning and predicting nonsense" when speculating over the death of television.

Speaking on a panel at Advertising Week Europe, moderator IPG chairman and CEO Michael Roth asked Hazlitt how she viewed the future of television and whether it was a dying platform in the face of mobile adoption. Hazlitt affirmed that she did not believe that to be the case, telling the audience that she wished advertisers would "stop moaning and talking nonsense".

She added: "TV is a part of everyone's lives. It's not television as such, it's broadcast-quality content, it's decent content - as Sir Trevor McDonald said today - it's pictures and sound together and beautifully put together," stating before adding the belief that people were in need of 'a curator' for the content that they watched.

"Since the beginning of time, we have needed a curator because people cannot be bothered to look for it all themselves because they want to be part of a group and they want to be part of something that everybody else is doing, particularly when it comes to entertainment. It's why football is so huge, it's why live event television is so huge, it's why if you get the drama right, it's so huge. The key is that if it's all not live, and just under 90 per cent of it is still."

She went on to highlight how important the distribution of content had become, as well as the monetisation of that content by media companies.

"If it isn't advertising then be clear that it's advertising to the consumer and then make the advertising really good and if it isn't advertising be clear in your own mind as a broadcaster about what you're doing. Our new channel, ITV On with Sky is another way for us to monetise our content that is blooming fabulous and people want to watch it over and over again.

She continued: "Stop predicting the death of television and talk about how content will always gather people together and talk about how interesting and exciting it is over the next few years, if you're someone like me, then you have got to monetise it and if you're an advertiser then you should be so excited about doing wonderful things alongside this content instead of moaning and predicting nonsense."

The panel also heard from Jean-Francois Decaux, chairman and co-CEO of JC Decaux, Justine Southall, publishing director of Marie Clare and Lisa Utzshneider, vice president of global advertising for Amazon.

ITV Fru Hazlitt Advertising Week

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