Rita Ferro Previews Her First Combined Disney Upfront

Ahead of the most distinct, transformative upfronts week in a decade, Adweek is sitting down with a different ad sales chief each day. Following Fox’s Marianne Gambelli on Tuesday is Rita Ferro, who is presiding over the first upfront since the Disney-Fox merger was finalized. In September, Ferro was named president of Disney advertising sales, overseeing all Disney media properties including, for the first time, ESPN, as well as the TV networks Disney acquired from Fox like FX and National Geographic. Disney will be holding a single combined upfront event—which had previously been focused solely on ABC, and last year, ABC-Freeform—Tuesday at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall in New York. As part of that shift, ESPN will no longer hold its traditional stand-alone Tuesday morning event. As she prepared for Disney’s first combined upfront, Ferro spoke with Adweek about her plans for Tuesday’s event, why the presentation won’t turn into a marathon and her top upfront priority. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Adweek: After you were promoted last September, you had several months to prepare for the close of the Disney-Fox merger. What did you focus on during that time? Rita Ferro: It’s funny, because of the way some of these mergers work, I had very little intel on the business and the [networks] there, so what I did at the beginning was focus on the integration of the ESPN and Disney-ABC businesses at the time, which, by the way, are still far and away the biggest. We worked really hard to make sure that we were focused on, from a marketplace perspective, the sales expertise by industry, which I think is only going to be more important as we start to see an evolution in data, technology and ad products that are custom to the industry and the advertiser much more specifically than have been in the past. So there was a focus around that and then, as we built the team across all of our businesses, making sure that we were prepared to, when the Fox deal went through, plug those folks in right into the industry teams, the agency teams and everything we would see inside that business. Had you known all along that you would be doing one combined upfront event this year, or did that decision come after the Disney deal closed? We knew we were going to do one event when we brought ESPN together with Disney-ABC, because those were the two big events that happened at upfront week. We knew that advertisers would appreciate forgoing the [ESPN] event in the morning and having one event with the best of the Walt Disney Company on one stage. Frankly, it’s been what they’ve been asking us for for years. Then having Nat Geo and FX round out the totality of our opportunity to go to market with, it just made sense. When you see these brands on the stage together—after we announced the deal, we actually had Freeform, FX and ABC together in Chicago doing development [presentations]—it’s incredible. Because they are so unique in their audiences, fans and content that they serve, they help lift each other. It’s like one plus one plus one is five, not three. So I think it’s going to be an extraordinarily impactful upfront event. How are you approaching the event and making sure everybody gets their spotlight without this turning into what seems like a never-ending marathon, which is always something buyers worry about? We have given guidance to our brand partners that this is to show the best of the best. We’ve spent a lot of time doing road shows up until now across all of the brands with all of our major agency and brand clients. I would say we’ve had hundreds of presentations over the last eight weeks, and we’ve spent a lot of time on really going into the deep dive by brand and by clients depending on who we were speaking to in that room. This show is really the culmination of the best of the best across all of these brands with the content owners speaking directly to our brand’s advertising partners to talk about what they are most excited about with their individual brands. You’re going to see it. I think you’re going to see how it actually flows really nicely because it’s focused on all of the advancements we’ve made in data and technology. It focuses on super serving audiences and how these brands serve their audiences. And so, it tells a really nice story that’s very complete and yet, at the same time, super easy to understand. So this won’t turn into a marathon? I’m super sensitive to the notion of people feeling overwhelmed, and yet, at the same time, I just had breakfast with the head of investment from one of the major buying companies. I said, “My target is 90 minutes,” and he’s like, “I would sit through two hours if there’s a lot you want to tell me and it’s relevant. I just don’t want it to be video after video without the story.” And I said, “You’re not going to get video after video, because that’s not the format of what it is.” Yet, at the same time, we know people love to see [ESPN’s] Kenny Mayne, and he’s there, and people love to see Jimmy Kimmel [who will be there, too]. Then we have a great surprise act at the end that I think people are going to be really excited about. There’s entertainment in between [the spotlight on each brand], so we have Kenny, we have Jimmy and then we have that final performance to make sure that it’s not all videos coming at you and drowning you. Even if [the videos] are separated by brands, at some point you’re like, “I can’t stand it anymore, end the torture!” So, we’re giving you some breaks with some very funny men who are, as you know, hysterical, and then ending it with a fun performance at the end. [kickout id="1"] What should buyers expect as you go into this upfront with the expanded Disney portfolio? We’re doubling down on reach, engagement and effectiveness across the portfolio. We have breakthrough ad products that we’ve brought to market, and we will continue to innovate in that space. People like to come to us and say, “I’m launching a new product" or "I want to do a different type of deal around X," and how does that solution come to life organically within each one of those brands, that it still has a through line? What would happen before when we weren’t one team, even though it was trying to solve for one solution, it still felt like different executions across the brand. We now have one centralized marketing team that ideates with the product, with the brand. They come back to our brand owner so that people who are making content for our networks are also making the solution for the brand product. And so, it’s going to fit in much more organically into the content. And at the end of the day, I think we are already seeing tremendous value in people wanting to leverage the portfolio. What are your top upfront priorities? To get advertisers to commit and really engage in true flexibility around video and television content across screens is my No. 1 priority. Every year, we go in and people say, “The digital is going to grow,” and then we come back to the same conversation. I want our partners, our agency partners in particular, to really show up and put their money behind what they’re saying they’re going to do. You want ad innovation? We’ve delivered across ad innovation both on the digital side and on the linear side, in entertainment and in sports. We’ve done ad innovation that is probably cutting edge in terms of the different types of formats that advertisers are looking for, which is why they keep coming back and we have so many multiyear advertisers who renew. I want to see the dollars follow the eyeballs because the linear impressions are down, the marketplace has changed and we continue to see incredible opportunity across OTT, across digital and across our owned and operated apps—yet the dollars don’t flow as easily to those platforms. We have to do a better job as an industry and as our agency partners of saying to [clients that] television is the content that works. But it’s not necessarily only the platform that’s working. The screen on the wall is a great screen, but by the way, that screen on my wall also has OTT and SVOD. And how we sell that in the upfront, to provide us the opportunity to really optimize the partnerships across all of our partners, is going to be critically important. That would be my No. 1 far-and-away big priority in this upfront, because I truly believe that television content is king. Everybody wants great television and great storytelling. We continue to have momentum in this space, but that momentum doesn’t only live in linear television in the truest sense; it lives across our television ecosystem and we should be selling the benefit of that.