D
igital wasn’t a big part of the Fox Sports ad sales effort when Marla Newman joined the company from MTV Networks in 2011. Situated in a different building, blocks away from where the TV ad sales group is based, Newman seized every opportunity to get a seat at the Fox Sports ad sales table.
“I had to fight my way through at the beginning,” Newman said. “I came over … every other day to check in and let the TV ad sales side of the business know that digital can be additive.”
Marla
Newman
FOX SPORTS DIGITAL
That message has become clear, and Newman, as senior vice president, sales, today has a key place at the table.
As an example, last month, Fox Sports’ top executives, including President Eric Shanks, had a brainstorming meeting to come up with ideas for a particular advertiser around the World Series. Newman declined to name the advertiser because the deal hasn’t been finalized, but she said that when she came up with an idea that tied in social networking through Fox Sports’ baseball website Just a Bit Outside, Fox’s executives bought in.
“I knew we were starting to be taken more seriously when [Fox ad sales executive Neil Mulcahy] stopped calling our group ‘dot-com’ and started just calling us ‘digital,’” Newman joked.
But as Mulcahy notes, Newman is certainly an important cog in the Fox Sports ad sales division. “Marla works tirelessly to identify ways we can connect the digital space with what we’re trying to achieve for clients on Fox, Fox Sports 1 and our other linear platforms,” he said.
— John Ourand
