What you need to know:

• Melissa Hopkins has brought in ex-Optus running mate Lucio Ribeiro to lead innovation and digital marketing across Seven as the broadcaster restructures its marketing and audiences leadership team.
• Ribeiro will focus on using AI and tech to make audiences stick longer with Seven's programming and ultimately boost the performance of its 7plus streaming platform.
• Hopkins aims to remould Seven to become a hybrid between the BBC and Netflix - loved and tech endowed.

Seven has tapped one of Australia’s most respected digital marketing innovators to overhaul the way the broadcaster engages with and retains viewers across its linear and digital ecosystem.

Lucio Ribeiro will join the broadcaster in the newly-created role of Director of Digital Marketing and Innovation on 1 August 2023.

He is a former colleague of new chief marketing and audience officer Melissa Hopkins; working at the telco as Director of Technology, Innovation and Activation; alongside Hopkins who served as VP Marketing and CMO.

At Optus, Ribeiro's remit was to showcase the speed and bandwidth of Optus' mobile network by producing attention-catching experiments which included remote controlled V8 Supercars, an indigenous metaverse instalment in the Art Gallery of NSW and VR machines at the Melbourne Grand Prix. He was part of the team that developed the alliance announced last week between Optus and Elon Musk's SpaceX that will launch another network of low earth orbiting satellites - designed for Australia-wide mobile coverage more than speed. Curiously, that deal landed a few days after Telstra announced it would retail SpaceX's current Starlink Satellite Internet service.  

Ribeiro studied artificial intelligence at MIT and was the co-founder of digital agency Online Circle Digital, which he sold in 2019. He is also a scholar of The Marketing Academy and has lectured on digital marketing and AI at RMIT and Deakin University.

Hopkins said Ribeiro fills an important gap in the makeup of Seven’s 120-strong marketing and audience team, primarily responsible for all digital marketing and innovation, including driving new avenues for Seven to connect with audiences.

When she joined Seven Network four months ago, two areas that needed greater focus were on building the Seven brand, strategy and digital marketing.

“The big thing I noticed when I came in was just how deficient we were with what I would call digital marketing,” she told Mi3. “The world of AI, VR and digital engagement just really wasn't a focus because we were too executional and not strategic enough. So we developed a role for the director of digital marketing and innovation to lead this.

“Other than being resilient and crazy and a bundle of joy and energy, Lucio is curious. He's a builder and he's a maker, and he shapes and delivers the impossible.”

This will include leading Seven Network’s efforts to drive search engine marketing and search engine optimisation; driving the acquisition of viewers and properly measuring success; and improving stickiness on the network’s streaming platform, 7plus. 

Click, flick and stick

One of Ribeiro’s first tasks will be turning Seven from a “destination” media platform into one that is also “exploratory”. For example one where viewers who may turn up for sports like AFL or tent pole shows like Farmer Wants a Wife but then discover other content that keeps them on the Seven streaming platform in the  Netflix mould.

Ribeiro's backing AI to help drive that outcome.

“I want to explore generative AI around the large language models that already exist in the business. I think that's an immense opportunity to facilitate the journey and discovery,” he said. “If you think about what Netflix does, it is simple experiences around thumbnails with different emails that are matched to different users. The technology is there and Seven has a ridiculous amount of really great programs available. We just need to better facilitate the exploratory journey, the UX side of it.” 

Ribeiro said he was lured from Optus to Seven for the challenge of modernising a broadcast business as it pushes deeper into BVOD. He thinks Seven can dispel the cliché that "TV is dead", and is backing emerging technologies – TVs, VR, AI and 5G – to explode that myth. Plus, he likes Hopkins' leadership style.

The Hopkins era

Seven’s new marketing and audiences chief made no bones about her plans to evolve how Seven Network engages and interacts with audiences.

Although Ribeiro is the only new hire to date, there have been a swathe of promotions as Hopkins has restructured her marketing and audiences leadership team. 

Another key promotion is Larissa Ozard, Seven’s Director of Marketing – Brand, Product and Trade, whose role has expanded to cover brand and product strategy. Hopkins has begun grouping Seven’s TV programs into “six product sets” that will become key pillars in how it goes to market – but she's keeping those pillars tight for now. 

Other key execs in Hopkin’s senior leadership team include: Director of Audience Development and Growth, Andrew Brain; Head of Creative Services and Marketing Operations, James Falzon; Creative Director, Graham Donald; Head of Publicity, Kate Amphlett; and Head of Corporate Communications, Rob Sharpe.

TV must market itself

Hopkins said the great irony of TV is its power to build brands for others – and its seeming inability to harness that firepower for its own ends. She's planning to change all that, first by overhauling its brand architecture and positioning to re-embed Seven within "the fabric of Australia" and make it "stand for something". The brand strength of the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK are providing the template.

“Seven was a great partner of mine at Optus and very good at telling me the story of how they're going to build my own brand’s equity and brand love. But there's not a broadcaster in this market, and very few globally, that know how to market themselves,” she said. “I don't think there's been people doing proper marketing in broadcast; most of my peers have come from sales and trade backgrounds.”

To do this, Hopkins plans to drive an emotional connection between viewers and the Seven brand that “is a trusted, good friend known for news, sport and big programs”.

A key tool in the arsenal will be to use linear TV moments, such as the Women's World Cup, live sport and tent pole shows to promote content on 7plus through impactful in-show integrations.

Per Hopkins, an example could be during Home and Away, Ray Meagher’s character Alf stops in his tracks for an in-show promotion of The Voice under the punchline “the world stops for The Voice” – a tactic that could be deployed across Seven’s TV assets.

TV’s language needs to change

Seven is launching a trade campaign this month that challenges old school thinking around how success is measured. Hopkins said “overnight metro ratings” are firmly in its cross-hairs, a drum banged for the last few years by CEO James Warburton. Both think moving away from the overnights will shift the narrative on TV's perceived decline.

”It's been remarkable coming in and realising as an industry that we're still talking the same way that the industry was 20 years ago," says Hopkins.

Consumption habits have changed, the language needs to change. We need to talk the same way the streaming partners and the digital players are talking, and that is something that I'm really focused on because everyone keeps thinking TV is dying. We've been bad as an industry at not dispelling myths around viewing habits in Australia.”

The marketing chief baulks at the idea that an established legacy media brand like Seven aims to be seen as a “disrupter” like Netflix, but believes it can play the role of a “progressive market shaper”.

Now Ribeiro is tasked with harnessing cutting edge tech to help drive that transformation.