Media Headliner: The man taking the MSN message to the world

The talk is all about this week's Cannes festival, which its popular
online service, MSN, is sponsoring in a bid to build relationships with
the advertising and media communities. Perfect timing, then, to announce
that the general manager for digital sales at MSN, Chris Dobson, is
taking on an expanded role as the vice-president of international
advertising sales.

In his new position, Dobson will be responsible for MSN's international
advertising sales across all markets outside of the US. His main task
will be to build strong relationships with advertisers and agencies, on
both the creative and media sides of the business.

Dobson agrees that since the dotcom crash earlier this decade, online
has too often been seen as merely an add-on, and says that it has not
always been easy to get face-to-face time with senior management during
his five years with MSN. However, he claims to have witnessed a change
of attitude over the past 12 months.

He says: "The industry finds it hard because there is still this journey
advertisers are moving on, but they are moving faster and faster. Some
companies are really getting it - the O2s and Sony Ericssons of this
world, for example.

"They absolutely understand where their audience is and are adjusting
how they plan media accordingly. Yet there is a division between those
that really get it and those that are not quite there.

"But the latter group is rapidly catching up. I've noticed that FMCG
customers no longer ask why they should be online. Instead, they have
been asking how they should be online. You can't look at traditional
ways of buying and planning media as sustainable."

Dobson cites the outcome of the recent Adidas/Reebok media review as
evidence of this. In what was an unusual but forward-thinking move,
Aegis moved its digital network centre-stage, with the Isobar chief
executive, Nigel Morris, leading the pitch on behalf of the network's
media agency, Carat. The strategy paid off when Carat landed the
multimillion-pound account.

As well as wooing media agencies, Dobson also plans to take the MSN
message to creative agencies, but he concedes it's an uphill struggle
not helped by the quality of some online creative. Yet he's resolute and
will start drawing battle lines on La Croisette this week. "Agencies
make a lot of money out of TV ads, so you can understand," he says.
"Everything we do in Cannes is designed to encourage the creative
agencies to think about the creative interactive world and the big
companies to think about how their media mix should change."

Dobson began his career in the motor industry in the late 70s, working
in overseas military sales at Land Rover. After seven years, he embarked
on a career in TV sales, beginning at Thames TV during its late-80s
heyday, before moving through various ITV companies, including Media
Airtime Sales and London Weekend Television. In 1994, Dobson moved to
MTV, ending up as its vice-president for European sales.

After six years at MTV, he moved to ZenithOptimedia to gain some
"experience on the media agency side of the business". It was a
short-lived stint, which Dobson says was intended to last longer. After
just 18 months, he was poached by MSN. He recalls: "Microsoft was just
coming out of the dotcom crash and was re-energising its efforts around
the offline space. They realised that they didn't know much about the
media business. I was very much a traditional media guy back then, and
they talked me into it."

Looking back, Dobson argues his timing was good: "I was very fortunate
to join the company after it had had a year of hell. We had to start
again and it was almost like building from scratch. The business had
been driven by venture capitalists' money, which was not real business.
No-one talked to a real customer like a Nestle or Procter & Gamble; it's
almost as if the company started properly five years ago."

He feels he has made his biggest impact at Microsoft on its MSN Hotmail
and MSN Messenger services, which have been transformed into
revenue-generating advertising platforms. "Five years ago, we didn't
know what to do with them. They were generating an audience but there
was no approachable revenue," he says.

A big part of Dobson's new job will also involve Microsoft's efforts to
think about advertising across all of its properties, including the ones
"we don't yet have, such as Massive". Last month, Microsoft acquired the
in-game advertising company Massive in a multimillion-pound deal - the
first of many acquisitions, Dobson claims. He will also explore new
advertising opportunities on web-based services, such as a Windows Live,
Xbox Live and Office Live - which will be sold as a portfolio to
agencies and clients - as they roll out in the coming month.

Dobson is guarded on the finer details of Microsoft's future advertising
plans, but is excited about the future possibilities of user-generated
content and search. He is also effusive about new software applications
and imagines a desktop widget, sponsored by Coca-Cola, that delivers
real-time Premiership football results. "We're going to try to create
new advertising experiences as the world changes and a lot of it is to
do with this big change around user-generated content," he says.

In the meantime, Dobson rubs his hands with glee as he reflects on
business five years on from the dotcom crash. "We're currently in a
second boom and we're about to move into another display hike where the
big players such as Procter & Gamble start to bring brand money to the
online space to drive their business forward," he says.

With growth like this for MSN, it's no surprise that Bill Gates'
eventual departure has barely raised an eyebrow.

Dobson's sales pitch in Cannes, however, is likely to lead to a few
quizzical expressions from adland's old guard.