Tess Alps

September 2010

Tess has had an expansive career in media having worked for media owners and agencies alike including ITV, Yorkshire and Tyne Tees TV and then PHD where she set up PHD Drum and was appointed chairman of PHD Group UK in 2003. In 2006 Tess took on her current role as Chief Executive of Thinkbox.

Thinkbox is the marketing body created by – and funded by – the major players in the UK’s commercial television sector, so Tess’ job is to persuade agencies and advertisers that TV is the best place to spend their marketing budgets. All sounds a bit Twentieth Century, you’re probably thinking – hasn’t something called the internet come along recently and turned everything upside down?

Well it’s true that ten years ago TV advertising was pronounced dead at the hands of the internet, yet today that all looks rather premature. So has Tess done a great job pulling the wool over advertisers’ eyes – or has some genuine innovation been going on in the way agencies and advertisers are using all the media available to them?

Tess told us how, in the time she’s been at Thinkbox, the voice of TV has shifted from being on the defensive, having to prove its worth, to actively promoting itself as a 21st Century medium – fully aligned with internet technology and a crucial medium for advertisers.