At media agency Optimedia, Maureen Bosetti is responsible for negotiating millions of dollars worth of TV buys for clients such as phone giant T-Mobile, restaurant chain Denny’s, British Airways and BBC America.
Bosetti, now 38, has every reason to be full of herself, and yet she’s focused on making sure that salespeople’s calls get returned, and everyone she manages is treated with respect. But she’s also got her eye on the big picture, in hopes of pushing the ball forward on the addressable-TV front.
By 23, Bosetti was negotiating major buys for one of the nation’s top advertisers, General Motors, and wrapping several upfront deals. Bosetti got GM into sports properties such as the Olympics, NFL and the NCAA, and back in the good old days she recalls requests were often to put another $100 million down and get a couple of thousand more ratings points.
After years of frantic deal-making, Bosetti joined Discovery Communications as a sales planner in 1997, learning how to see things through the eyes of the sales team. She soon returned to agency life, joining Universal McCann to work on Coca-Cola; she’s now been at Optimedia for six years. “It’s a good place for me to be,” she says. “I get involved in so many different assets. I work closely with planning and digital and research. It is very integrated, and I can do a lot and have flexibility.”
Besides negotiating TV deals, Bosetti was involved in shaping the original contract for MTV Networks’ online music service, Rhapsody— a rival to Apple’s iTunes. Her Optimedia job now is “to help them figure out where they should spend [their ad dollars]. It has been a mutually beneficial relationship.”
But Bosetti also turns her eyes toward addressable TV. “I’m very interested in that area with Canoe, Invidi and the satellite companies,” she says, and in learning what the set-top box can reveal about consumers’ habits. The reason goes back to her focus on respect; it is all, she says, about the “need to make TV more accountable.”
