Donna Speciale on Her First Univision Upfront and Winning Over New Marketers

The upfronts week presentations have ended, and now it’s time for the real work: the negotiations. Adweek is sitting down with each of the ad sales chiefs who presented this week to talk about their respective events and their strategies for navigating this year’s marketplace. Following NBCUniversal’s Mark Marshall, Fox’s Marianne Gambelli , Discovery’s Jon Steinlauf, Disney’s Rita Ferro and JP Colaco’s WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS’ Jo Ann Ross, next up is Donna Speciale, president of advertising sales and marketing, Univision. A lot has already changed at Univision since Speciale (who previously headed up ad sales for WarnerMedia) arrived at the company in January. It has rolled out PrendeTV, a free streaming service for U.S. Hispanics, and announced a Spanish-language media merger with Mexico’s Televisa. During its upfront presentation last week, Univision celebrated its transformative year and invited marketers along for the ride. Speciale talked about her first Univision upfront, trying to convince marketers that “don’t watch our networks” to do business with her and which underrepresented categories she's targeted first. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Adweek: What message did you hope to get across with your first Univision upfront presentation?Speciale: Our goal was to try to get the clients to understand our audience a little bit more. I am very much aware that the majority of the people that we are talking to don't watch our networks. So I really wanted them to understand who our Hispanic community was, and their connection, their loyalty, their power in the marketplace. We are much more of a consultative sales organization than I think other sales organizations are. Because there's a huge education in learning about the U.S. Hispanic marketplace, which then translates to our audience. I also wanted to not always talk about ourselves, it was really just about talking about their business and how we can help them grow it. I'm hoping what came across was, multicultural with Hispanic at the center, it needs to be a business imperative. It's the only way short-term and long-term, they're going to be able to grow their business. There's 64 million U.S. Hispanics right now in the United States, just about 20% of the population. You can't not talk to that 20% of the population. I loved [cohosting] with Luis [Silberwasser, president, Univision Television Network Groups]. Luis and I both being new [to the company] on the same day, I think you saw very clearly that we are the new Univision. With all the transformation and the evolution that we are doing in such a short period of time, in this four-month window, my goal was to have the marketers and our clients see what we feel inside. We feel the energy, we feel the passion, we see the change. I am very much aware that the majority of the people that we are talking to don't watch our networks. So I really wanted them to understand who our Hispanic community was.—Donna Speciale, president of advertising sales and marketing, Univision One of those changes in the past four months is the launch of PrendeTV. What are you plans for it in the upfront?Prende is one of our top priorities. We launched a little over a month ago with 45 channels. We now have 50, and 30,000 hours of content. It's adding more reach to our audience, so we're really pushing it. It's not just about buying linear anymore, I want everybody to buy all of our touch points. A lot of marketers previously worked with you at WarnerMedia. What should they expect from you as they go into the Univision upfront?They need to see that Univision as a media company is very different than the other media companies. Everybody right now is talking about audiences; we are an audience segment—Latinos and Hispanics are a segment within themselves. So we need to be literally their right arm and help them understand this marketplace and the audience. We're not just a traditional media company, where we just want to sell you 30s or 15s. We have to be a really close connection to them, to help them learn and understand the insights and what this audience can bring to them for their brands. So to me, it's a much more connected partnership, all the way from beginning to end. What is your top upfront priority this year?I have a ton of them. Really, my top priority is to get new advertisers to get to Univision. I've told you that I was shocked [when I joined] that there's a little over 400 advertisers [that advertise on Spanish-language media. The good news is that we brought almost 100 new advertisers onto Univision since I've been here in the past four and a half months. But there are 1,900 advertisers that are in English language. So there's a long way to go. I don't want them to come on Univision, just for the sake of coming on Univision—it will be a business imperative. I can promise them that they will see growth with their brands and their business by literally reaching an audience that they're not reaching anywhere else. Univision’s New Execs Urge Marketers Not to Ignore Hispanic Consumers To that end, are there certain categories that you feel have been underrepresented at Univision that you’re trying to bring into the fold?Pharma and financial were really surprising to me, being underrepresented. We've made headway; they are some of the new brands that have come on since the beginning of the year. But again, there's a long way to go. We've made a lot of inroads with the direct to consumer brands; when I came in here, I didn't think they were as large as they should have been. But there's a little bit in every category. What big topics have emerged in early upfront discussions?Streaming and digital seems to be the topic of conversations that everybody's having. I'm obviously still talking about all my linear business. I'm in a very different boat than what's happening in English language, because I do still have tons of impressions on my linear business, versus the other networks. So I need, to grow volume in all places. Listen, it's a very strong market. Flexibility and fluidity are still topics of conversation. And I think that's right. I like having the fluidity conversation, because I think it's smart to be able to look at all of our platforms holistically. At some point, we're going to get to a place where we're not talking about linear-digital-streaming, we're going to be talking about content on all touchpoints and being able to come to this marketplace with an audience target to go across the board. That to me is fluidity. If we look at the world with that lens, that's a positive, so bring it on. Addressable and advanced advertising were big priorities for you at your old job. To what degree will you be focusing on them in this upfront?We are definitely focusing on it, it's very important to clients. That's why I brought Dan Aversano over from Warner, he's heading up my whole data and advanced advertising capabilities. So, we are focusing on that, but that's where the Hispanic data graph comes in. We got to get this data graph in place, at least in a stage where we can utilize it, probably by the end of the year. That's going to lead into and help feed us all with our audience segments and stuff that we want to do in audience targeting. And then we do want to do addressability as well. I believe addressability is still in its infancy stage. It's not in a scalable state. You still have to do all your deals on a one-by-one basis. We're going to be doing beta tests with Vizio and with Dish this year, and we will probably add more in 2022 as well. But clients have been coming to us wanting to do betas with them, and we will be doing that. Any other messages for marketers?In four months, we have done so much. Just think of what's going to happen in the next six months. That was why our theme was, ‘Grow With Us.’ We're growing and marketers should be growing with us. So get on the ride and take the journey with us. During Its Transformative Year, Univision Invites Marketers Along for the Ride