Exciting changes ahead for Spark Media

Gill Randall

The newspaper sales division will retain the Spark Media name, and will house booking, production, sales, marketing services, research (ROOTS, etc.) and other market intelligence needed to build effective media strategies.

Gill Randall will lead Spark Media as CEO, along with industry veterans Olav Westphal as Sales Director, Debbie McIntyre as Marketing Services and Research Director, Diane Albertus heads up Advertising Operations Director and Celeste Blake as Finance Director.

The digital sales business will be rebranded as Spark-Hive Digital, and will continue to represent Caxton’s well-known and extensive online assets.

Current Spark Joint CEO, Marc du Plessis, will initially oversee Spark-Hive Digital’s leadership team, including Parmeshan Moodliar as GM Sales; Kristin Louw as GM Operations and Ashleigh Footit in the capacity GM Programmatic and Data.

Marc will then be taking on further responsibilities within the Caxton-CTP group. We congratulate him on this recognition and thank him for his exceptional contribution to Spark Media.

The media environment is deepening in its complexity, rendering the traditional separation of print and digital strategies artificial, at best. Consequently, media planners and strategists are expected to have a thorough grasp of all the channels within the media mix.

To help planners navigate this highly integrated landscape, we believe that the onus lies with the media owner to offer specialised knowledge about how their channels can provide real value within a broader approach.

To state it succinctly, we strongly believe a more focused approach to the representation of our varied channels will best serve the interests of all stakeholders.

We are excited to implement this next step in Spark’s evolution as a premier commercial channel provider, and look forward to building on existing and new relationships with our valuable clients.