Promoted to Chair Of Global Advertising & Partnerships
NBCUniversal promotes Yaccarino to chair, Global Advertising and Partnerships, adding data strategy, local and regional sports network sales and cross-company strategic initiatives to her portfolio, along with global and national sales. In a divisional memo, Shell says:
While there is no doubt we are a content and technology company at our core, we need to keep accelerating our business plans to define entertainment and build the future of advertising. With the addition of these strong teams and new initiatives, we’re expanding our offerings for clients while diversifying our business and creating new company-wide opportunities. We’re making the right investments to bring that future into focus.
She will continue to report directly to Jeff Shell, CEO, NBCUniversal, who says:
Linda has done a fantastic job moving the advertising business forward, not just for NBCUniversal, but the industry at large.I’m excited for her to continue architecting the future of the ad-supported ecosystem and uniting all assets of this company to make us the best possible partner for our customers around the world.
Promoted to President, Advertising Sales
Yaccarino is promoted to NBCUniversal’s President of Advertising Sales:
I joined NBCUniversal because of my belief in the incredible power of this portfolio and to work with the strongest sales team in the business and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. As a unified sales team, our goal is to collaboratively develop the most creative solutions to move our clients’ businesses forward.I look forward to continuing to partner with Bonnie Hammer, Ted Harbert and Lauren Zalaznick and all of the business leaders at NBCU helping to bring our outstanding content to the market.
CEO Burke:
Linda is an outstanding executive with the proven ability to maximize the value of a portfolio of assets in a complex marketplace. I am pleased to have her leading the sales strategy for our company, offering advertisers innovative opportunities to partner with the best brands in the business.
Yaccarino hired by NBCUniversal
A week after leving Turner, Yaccarino is hired as President, Cable Entertainment & Digital Advertising Sales at NBCUniversal. Yaccarino takes responsibility for all cable entertainment and digital advertising sales for the company including USA, Syfy, Bravo Media, E! Entertainment, Oxygen Media, Style, G4, Sprout, Chiller, Cloo and their respective digital platforms. Additionally, Yaccarino will oversee the sales efforts for NBC.com, AccessHollywood.com, NBCSports.com, NBCOlympics.com and GolfChannel.com and the stand alone digital businesses DailyCandy, Swirl, Fandango, iVillage and Television Without Pity. Company:
Linda has a proven track record in driving commercial success through industry-leading innovations and creative strategic marketing solutions for her clients.
in 2016, Yaccarino described her first year at NBCU:
The first year at NBCUniversal was the hardest year I have ever had in my entire career. I was hired to come and head up an entire sales and marketing department. But I was also hired to transform the company. [There were 15 different sales teams]and they were rigidly siloed and they were almost allergic to collaboration. I believe [the ad sales system] was invented by Scooby-Doo. It was held together with duct tape and paper clips…The compensation plan, I quickly dubbed the sales prevention plan. Incentives were all out of whack. Compared to our competitors, we were about a decade behind…Anyone ever watch that show Naked and Afraid? I felt like that every day. I didn’t know where to start. I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready…I was hired to transform the company and it didn’t matter if I was ready or not. I learned really quickly that if I was going to be successful transforming this company, I was going to have to get used to being lonely. Because I was never more lonely than when I managed over 1,000 people.