"My team is amazing," she said. "I have so much respect for the work they do and how they don't run from complexity. That's what it takes nowadays -- there's not much time for talk over action and things move fast. You need people who understand complicated ideas and tools and can make them easy for our customers to use."
With experience in traditional sales, strategy and operations, and a history of driving innovation, Norris is uniquely suited to a role that requires her to champion the new. I first met her when she was a Divisional Vice President of Sales at Comcast Advertising, and later worked with her when she served as Executive Vice President in charge of strategy and operations at Cablevision as it introduced the industry to addressable television. In between those roles, she served as the founding president of OVAB (then the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau, now known as the DPAA) and afterward as COO of rep firm Viamedia, where she introduced one of the industry's first inventory marketplaces. I asked what her history had taught her about introducing advertisers to new products and ideas.
"With products like Ads Everywhere and our data products like AudienceTrak and Audience App, not to mention Linear Household Addressable, which will be rolling out later this year after a successful test in our L.A. market, there's a huge amount for our people -- even our most experienced people -- to learn," she explained. "That requires curiosity. The most successful media people -- salespeople, sales managers, marketers, assistants, everyone -- are curious to learn and try new things, even when those things might not be part of their everyday responsibilities yet.
"Just keeping up with the industry takes a huge amount of time these days," she continued. We all know there's never enough time to read everything, but, according to Norris, they make curiosity a priority. "The best salespeople are as curious about what we can do for their clients as they are about their clients themselves," she said. "Clients know it, too. If you're not in a state of continual learning, you'll stand in place.
"Salespeople also need courage," she continued. "It takes courage to tell an advertiser who you've been working with for years that you have a new solution they need to consider. For executives, it takes courage to make the investment in time and resources necessary to launch new products."
Norris' advanced advertising sales team is led by Vice President Carolyn Sheflin, who runs the enterprise/national team, and Vice President Bill Herman, who leads field sales. Both have backgrounds that include traditional, digital and agency experience.
"They're wicked smart," Norris said, adding that the servant/leader management philosophy she's adopted throughout her career is something her team exemplifies as well.
Beyond curiosity and courage, her team and the entire sales organization at Reach is armed with some powerful tools. Ads Everywhere, for instance, isn't simply the ad inventory created when consumers authenticate their Charter subscription and log into programmer apps like ESPN GO and HGTV Watch -- a product known in the industry as TV Everywhere. Instead, it's a "cocktail" of that inventory (including over 50 network apps), plus inventory on Spectrum's own TV App (viewable live and on-demand, inside and outside the home, on platforms like Roku, Amazon and Apple TV and on smart TVs) and traditional set-top video-on-demand inventory. It can be targeted at a DMA or zone and, soon, by zip-code level and advanced audience attributes.
"With products like that, we're better able than we ever have been to make advertising more precise and powerful, and to help advertisers optimize their budgets," Norris noted. "Having experts like the people on my team, along with good marketing support, makes our whole organization more effective."
In Norris' opinion, the people on her team with digital roots have it a bit easier. "For a digital person to learn TV today, that's complexity they're used to," she explained. "Making the transition to next-gen, data-based television and letting go of old habits can be harder for traditional sellers, but it's the same kind of transformation companies across the whole industry are facing. Look at what's happening at NCC, look at the biggest agencies -- we're all changing fast and learning new skills and it's going to be better for everyone."
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