75. Ad Women
Joan Gillman
Title: President, Time Warner Cable Media Sales
Age: 41
Years in Industry: 2 ½ years in Cable
Vicki Lins
Title: VP, marketing and communications, Comcast Spotlight
Age: 42
Years in Industry: “17 (7 telecom, 10 in cable)”
Years Left in Industry: “No end in sight.”
Why Them? As corporate VP of marketing and communications at Spotlight, Lins was the top-ranked woman (wielding the most clout by sheer virtue of Comcast’s size) in the current* cable ad sales landscape—until September. That’s when Gillman was tapped to run Time Warner Cable’s ad sales shop, getting kicked upstairs for her success in revving up interactive TV and advanced advertising at Time Warner (and replacing old school ad sales chief Larry Fischer in TW’s top sales post). Both Lins and Gillman are WICT Betsy Magness Leadership fellows, and those leadership skills are being called upon now to reinvent cable advertising for a more challenging era than spots and dots. Armed with their companies’ respective advanced products and platforms they’re helping retool cable advertising to take advantage of technologies that put cable at the forefront of the digital sea change in media and communications: Gillman with her UK-honed ITV savvy and Lins with her role positioning and promoting Spotlight’s cutting-edge tools such as IntelliSpot, which tailors messages to different sub-sets of its subscriber base. - SB
*
Editor’s Note: Allow us to tip our hats online (where we didn’t have room in print) to cable’s other top female cable ad sales execs, past and present. The pioneers:
Connie Pettit, now at OpenTV, who ran ad sales for Times Mirror from the mid-1980s through to the company’s acquisition by Cox in the mid-1990s;
Sue Basile, who ran ad sales for Cablevision Industries and Vision Cable, from the late ‘80s to the early 90s; and
Judi Heady, who ran ad sales for AT&T Media Services from the late ‘90s through to the acquisition of AT&T Broadband by Comcast in 2002. In the current cable ad sales landscape, although their companies aren’t as big as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, we would be remiss not to acknowledge two women running their companies’ ad sales efforts:
Sonja Farrand, SVP on Mediacom’s OnMedia ad sales division; and
Anne Ragsdale, group VP of advertising for Bright House Networks.
Joan Gillman
I knew the cable industry was for me when: “I saw Interactive TV and Advanced Advertising in the UK.”
Top personal achievement in 2006: “Launch of live set-top box voting with NBC’s 'Last Comic Standing' across TWC markets.”
In my free time, I like to: “Play with my 1 year old daughter, Allison.”
Favorite restaurant: Veritas in New York City
Favorite city: Barcelona, Spain
Favorite TV show: “West Wing”
Favorite movie: “Harold and Maude”
Vicki Lins
Defining career moment: “Creating a new brand for Comcast (Comcast Spotlight).”
Top personal achievement in 2006: “Anticipating the birth of a son in December.”
My most embarrassing cable moment was: “Breaking my toe 30 minutes before my first meeting with Brian and Ralph Roberts.”
Favorite restaurant: “
Malibu Fish Shack on PCH at sunset.”
Least favorite piece of tech: “A remote control in my husband’s hand.”
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