Media agency stalwart Virginia Hollis has been contracted by the Times Media Group as a consultant to help drive the company’s advertising offering and improve the skills of its staff.
Hollis, former managing director of The MediaShop’s Sandton office, left The MediaShop late last year to forge her own company, Magnetic Direction. She serves as deputy chairman of the South African Audience Research Foundation.
“Virginia’s experience is perfectly aligned to support the culture of innovation at Times Media, allowing us to delve deeper into client strategies and deliver the most effective solutions to our advertisers. We are delighted to have engaged her as a consultant,” says Trevor Ormerod, general manager of advertising sales and strategic communications at Times Media.
“Applying her insight into new product innovation, launches and marketing campaigns, as well as advising on strategic responses to client briefs, we are strengthening the skill-set of our team, inevitably allowing us to maximise the synergy that exists amongst various media platforms of the Times Media Group,” Ormerod says.
Since taking the helm of Times Media’s advertising sales and strategic communications division, Ormerod has introduced several pioneering measures to increase advertising in today’s challenging market. One of them is the recently launched Times Media Academy, a move the company describes as “a value-add initiative that addresses the gaps existing in current industry training programmes, and aims to strengthen the print media skill-sets of clients and their agencies”.
Hollis will pass on her extensive knowledge of the media and marketing environment as a lecturer at the Academy. With 30 years in the industry, being a judge at the Cannes Lions awards and being awarded the honour of receiving the 2011 the MOST Media Legend Award, selected by peers in the South African media industry, there’s little she doesn’t know about media buying, planning, strategy, negotiation and competitive analysis.
“Times Media has a very exciting proposition for South African advertisers, and I look forward to working with Trevor and his team to further develop the robustness of their offering to the market,” Hollis says.
