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Times promotes executives

The longtime ad director fills a new position, and a manager replaces him.

By SCOTT BARANCIK
Published February 15, 2005

Two advertising executives at the St. Petersburg Times have been promoted to key posts.

Longtime ad director Richard Reeves, 55, has been named to the new position of vice president for advertising and marketing. He will oversee both departments and the paper's market research unit. He will remain a director of parent company Times Publishing Co.

Moya Neville, 43, will succeed Reeves as director of advertising and assume direct responsibility for the advertising team. She joined the paper a year ago as display advertising manager.

Since his promotion to advertising director in 1993, Reeves has helped the Times create several new products, including Web ads, targeted mailings to newspaper subscribers, sponsorship of job fairs and other events and the recently introduced weekly tbt*. Creating new revenue streams is a critical enterprise for the newspaper industry, whose share of ad dollars is steadily shrinking.

"I think (Reeves) has a very good handle on the things we need to do going forward to make sure we're growing," said publisher and executive vice president Marty Petty.

"We have tons of clients," Reeves said. "We have a wonderful brand that people trust. And we have 120 sales reps out calling all these people that we have relationships with.

"So the question we've been playing a lot with is, how do we extend our brand and leverage our sales relationships to help that client?"

Neville said she is eager to help Reeves build the Times' product line and its reputation.

"We want to match our customers' needs with the right audience, and not sell everything to every person," she said. "Eventually that will pay off for us, and for the customer."

Reeves was a student at the University of Florida in 1968 when he began selling ads for the Gainesville Sun . He joined the Times as an advertising sales representative in 1982, was named retail ad manager the next year. He was deputy advertising director before his promotion in 1993.

Neville, also a UF graduate, started her newspaper career 18 years ago at the Bradenton Herald. She began as a classified sales representative and rose to become its director of advertising and marketing. In 1997, she joined the Sarasota Herald-Tribune as classified advertising manager and later was named director of advertising and marketing.

--Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or 727893-8751.

[Last modified February 15, 2005, 01:15:09]