My Year as an ITV VIP

This last 12 months I’ve had the privilege of being a part of ITV Media‘s ‘VIP’ course along with 19 other agency planners from across the industry. ITV spent the year educating us all on what makes the UK’s first commercial TV station tick and the seismic changes and investments they have made to stay modern and ahead of the competition, all mixed in with some good old-fashioned media days out. Here’s what we got up to…

ITV kicked off the course by taking us all to Manchester for a first-look at the new VOD player they’ve introduced to the world of streaming.. ITVX! Colloquially dubbed ‘the Netflix killer’ by my fellow VIPs, ITVX houses everything ITV and more with a number of brand new TV programs starring the likes of David Tennant, Helena Bonham Carter and Damian Lewis exclusive to the platform alongside a back catalogue of thousands of hours of UK and US content. ITV also treated us to a tour of the Coronation Street cobbles and a chat with everyone’s favourite soap star Andy Whyment (Kirk).

The summer networking event offered a great opportunity to get to know my fellow VIPs and the people at ITV who make the course happen. Coming from an independent agency it was eye-opening to see how different everyone’s ‘day-to-day’ was and the different challenges that planners have to overcome.

My favorite educational session of the year, the inside commercial event fully immersed the VIPs in the world of brand partnerships, strategic targeting, a deep-dive into ITV’s nationwide audience insight study ‘what unites a kingdom?’ and much more. The day really illustrated how varied ITV is in its offering to brands and agencies with both cutting edge targeting capabilities and a dedicated in-house creative agency for brands to use to give their advertising the ‘ITV feel’.

Arguably the media event of the year! ITV Palooza unveiled the brand new ITVX platform to the industry, featured speakers from the upper echelons of ITV’s leadership and finished with an evening of brushing shoulders with the best of ITV’s celebrity talent and eavesdropping on the hourly arguments of Love Island’s winning couple.

The power of TV event took us behind the scenes with commissioners from across every genre of television and an inside look at scheduling from 6am right the way through to late night programming. We were also showed the incredible scale of ITV Studios (the production arm of ITV) and revealed that a number of my favorite BBC shows had been in fact produced by ITV. The day finished with a tour of the GMB, This Morning and Lorraine studios, and a few behind the scenes tales that won’t be repeated.

The year ended with our graduation at the new ITV offices in Television Centre in White City and included a look-back on our year as ITV VIPs and an inspiring interview with England Lioness (and second most capped England footballer in history) Jill Scott.

My year as an ITV VIP struck the perfect balance between deeply insightful and educational immersion days, and good old fashioned media fun! A massive thanks to everyone at ITV for the opportunity, especially Kelly Williams, Simon Dalglish, Mark Trinder, Laura Flynn, Hayley Dobson, Sasha Francis, Laura Meehan and Fiona Alwin and of course JAA for the nomination.