• by Joe Mandese , January 6, 2005

In a surprise move, network TV heavyweight MediaCom Wednesday restructured its national TV buying group into a team of four managing directors, divided by key accounts and categories. The account management approach to organizing its national TV negotiations is common among media sales organizations, but is unusual for ad agencies, which typically seek to negotiate deals en mass on behalf of all their clients.

The move follows the departure of Peter Olsen, who on Wednesday announced he was leaving as senior vice president-director of national broadcast at MediaCom to take a senior sales position at A&E Networks, presumably in the No. 2 slot reporting to A&E sales chief Mel Berning.

The new managing directors-national television at MediaCom are: Stacy Sullivan; Michel Krumper; Pam Gibbons; and Todd Gordon. They report jointly to Jon Mandel, chairman of MediaCom North America, and Dene Callas, CEO.

"We believe that the best buying power in the world doesn't mean anything, unless it's connected to your client's business. Vision-wise, we believe it's about the brands," said Mandel, explaining the new organizational structure to MDN. "We believe you can't have a good plan without a good buy and a good buy without a good plan. The idea here is to have the buys more connected to the brands by having managing directors who are responsible for specific brands working together."

In terms of negotiating with networks, Mandel said the teams would also divide their responsibilities, working on each other's behalf, with a designated point person being responsible for deals with specific networks.

"There's a point person for each network, but they represent each other's brands," he said.