Bloomberg Media routinely conducts internal surveys and collects client feedback, and data from each revealed that both groups struggled, at times, to discern who oversaw key processes. 

“We had too many diffuse shareholders in too many of our strategies,” Cook said. “Now we have a clear owner for everything.”

Following the changes, Bloomberg Media will now have a sales lead in each of its four regions: North America, London, Dubai and Singapore. 

Realigning the sales team around industries and appointing a primary stakeholder to each division creates a culture in which staff are expected to be subject matter experts with clearly defined fiefdoms, according to Mussalli. Such a shift means sales and marketing teams better understand the needs of their clients and work with them more collaboratively. 

The new structure prioritizes the needs of advertising clients, an effort bolstered by the creation of the client innovation team and the client council. These kinds of organizations provide advertisers more intimate access to internal conversations and early notice of upcoming changes and new products, according to Mussalli.

By drawing advertisers more deeply into the Bloomberg Media ecosystem, the strategy builds on its previous efforts—such as its elimination of open-exchange programmatic and emphasis on its first-party data solution—to make it easy for clients to work with the publisher but harder for them to go elsewhere.

“If Bloomberg has integrated marketing offerings and live events that are superior to others, but their audience is ubiquitous and financial news is everywhere, what you are really trying to do is create a switching cost,” Mussalli said. “How do you make it such that clients feel like they cannot leave?”