Associate Director - Entertainment PRS, Star Plus & Star Bharat

Job Summary -

The role in the Product & Revenue Strategy Function for our flagship HSM channels Star Plus & Star Bharat. This position is required to support & facilitate sales team of the respective channels. The incumbent will act as a key link between Programming/Marketing/Content teams and Sales teams and drive the brand philosophy and sales/revenue strategy for the channel to optimize channel inventory. This will be done through effective forecasting, planning, pricing and property integrations based on deep understanding of customer needs and patterns

Key Responsibilities

Strategic/Policy related KRAs

Customer and Pricing Strategy:

• Defining the pricing strategy along with the PRS Head and National Genre Head for the channel/cluster basis organization objectives, budget for the year, market scenario, competition, etc. in order to ensure the sales organization achieves overall revenue target.
• Driving the channel pricing agenda - setting benchmarks, providing inputs and sign-offs on deals, and participating in deal negotiations as and when required
• Build client wise strategy/deal structuring for the channel which includes creating and recommending client pricing options for individual client deals, building monthly client packages including decisions on what time bands to allocate to each client based on what works for their target segments and track deviations in delivery
• Build sponsor packages for impact shows and ensure maximum monetization for each property on the channel
• Build band wise revenue budget, show and property wise pricing including determination of sponsor packages
• Create and maintain strategies based on key genres to help understand the genre behavior, trends, movements etc. that may have impact on business.

Strategic Forecasting:

• Creating revenue business plan channel wise
• Building bottom-up revenue plans for the fiscal, quarter & month
• Tracking performance vs. annual plan, revising forecasts etc.

Operational/Process/Technology related KRAs

Product Understanding

• Developing insights into the genre & channel deliveries to develop customized pitches for clients
• Creating & implementing trade marketing agenda for the channel – Mailers, On Air promos, Trade events etc.

• Define a measurement process to ensure that clients and agencies are aligned on key performance metrics, establishing realistic business goals, and providing frontline support through reporting and analytics

• Impact landscape sizing of a particular genre – understand the kind of impact properties across channels, changes and evolutions compared to the previous year and deeper understanding of the advertisers who buy impact

Cross functional collaboration:

• Engage with sales teams to ensure revenue rationalization by forecasting projections/trends for a healthy business and designing attractive packages for the sales team to take to the market, conducting roadshows.

• Prepare the sales team so they can handle queries from clients and media planners/buyers with confidence.
• Supporting ad-sales team with operational tasks on rate cards, internal deal approvals, client sales proposals etc.
• Liaise with the Programming teams and build a thorough understanding of the channel objectives and performance in order to identify monetization opportunities, as also provide market / sales feedback in relation to channel properties
• Work collaboratively across Sales and Ops to ensure seamless delivery on deals from a client perspective, as well as inventory optimization and revenue maximization from a business perspective

Use of Tools and Systems:

• Building an understanding of the industry and clients through industry reports, trends, articles and BARC data to know plans of our key clients and categories to pre-empt the sales team for proactive pitching.
• Analyze market trends, Media performance versus Brand parameters and other critical trends

• Helps building client dockets to understand the advertising patterns for key advertisers versus competition genre wise, channel wise, brand wise, market wise and make recommendations basis the same to improve the efficiency of clients’ buys
• Deep dive on how advertisers in various sectors buy across genres – understanding the top categories, players, buying mix, impact purchased, channel mix, etc.

Financial Accountability/Commercial Impact:

• Revenue and Yield Delivery
• Working along with the sales team to ensure revenue targets are met
• Achieve yield objectives of annual plan
• Maximise channel/genre revenues across time slots, execute corrections and manage monthly revenues.
• Develop a strategy for the next year including customer strategy, pricing strategy and programme wise plans to add up to the channel revenue

Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking:

• Understand what the competition is doing and be agile to take decisions based on Supply, demand and other macro factors
• Prepare client pitch decks, Monthly/Quarterly review decks along with the team

Stakeholder management:

• Liaise with programming on the FPC and suggest changes based on the feedback from sales, monetization potential and demand situation. Problem solving skills are mandatory

Skills & Attributes for success

• Strategic planning
• Influencing Skills
• Result Orientation
• Negotiation Skills
• Analytical thinking

Preferred Education & Experience

• Minimum Qualification: MBA/PGDBM (Premier or Tier 1 management institute)
• With at least 10-13 years of post-qualification experience