Sunday marked a first for CIBC, ZenithOptimedia and The Toronto Star. ZenithOptimedia managed to swing a deal to place the first ad on the front page of the Star in the 112-year history of Toronto’s largest circulation daily. Although Sunday’s ad focused on RRSP season, the page-one slot will be a long-term Sunday position, with ads on different topics, says Michael Fielding, group account director of ZenithOptimedia.
He says the unique positioning was key because the shop is ‘always looking for ways to make clients stand out – a premium position and being one of the last papers in Canada [to offer that spot] made it that much more valuable.’ He adds: ‘Newspaper is a large battleground for the financial industry. We were looking for a premium position, uncluttered, in a medium we’d use naturally.’ Fielding says the deal took approximately two months to complete. He says: ‘The Star‘s a great paper’ and ZenithOptimedia was able to convince it to sell the page-one space by ‘leveraging our current relationship, what we’ve always done historically and what we plan to do in the future.’ Asked if this has opened the floodgates for the Star, Fielding replies: ‘quite possibly, because they’ve got six other days available.’ He adds that negotiating one of those days for another client would be considered if it were appropriate for that client.
