The Portuguese company SIC International Distribution is Impresa Media Group’s content distribution department. Formerly known as SIC Content Distribution, Impresa’s sales arm decided to adopt a new name and strategy due to the fact that the unit now also distributes the group's international channels, in addition to the contents. Cristina Vaz Tomé, Member of the Executive Committee and Chief Revenue Officer of Grupo Impresa, explained Señal News all the reasons behind this rebranding.
● Why did you decide to rebrand your sales arm?
“SIC international presence is a key pillar for our company’s strategy in the next three years. In a world that tends to become a global community, we have taken the first steps into crossing borders, distributing our content and channels to most traditional and new media partners. Therefore, this rebrand was part of a deeper restructuring of the revenues areas. The main goal was to adapt the revenue departments to the new challenges in content distribution and monetization, and create synergies between the different areas, especially in international distribution and content sales, where the opportunities to create synergies were even more evident with the search of new platforms. This restructuring is more than a rebranding; it is an internal reorganization in order to have our team with a new approach to the market and a broaden knowledge of our internal offering to suit better all of our clients”.
● With this move, are you looking for a wider international expansion?
“Yes, for sure. Our aim is to strengthen our international offering, and also to enter in new territories where we are not present yet. Our content has been making its way around the world successfully and we aim to reach all audiences - mainly family-oriented ones – with our drama catalogue, that has top quality and beautiful stories to tell to people”.
● How would you describe the current situation of Portuguese production?
“In a broader perspective, the Portuguese production is entering in a new era. There is more genre diversity, public incentives to develop an internal industry, incentives to increase international content distribution and promote co-productions, and also attract international investments in this area. The government has developed a specific strategy and investment policy to develop the Portuguese creative industries. In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as everywhere else in the world, we are facing some challenges because of the social distancing. We have to adjust quickly to restart shooting, and we have to be really creative in managing scenes which involve more physical contact in order to keep our actors safe, which is our top priority”.
● Are you focusing on any special genre or topic?
“Our catalogue focuses mainly on drama – stories about love, family and all new themes that are on top of mind of global societies, like the environment, for example. Culturally we have a great appeal for long running dramas, which we added to short versions, to become more appeal to international distribution. This year we are putting a strong effort in producing short series mostly based on real life events. These will be premium contents that we expect to air soon”.
● How did the pandemic impact the company and what plans do you have for the future once it ends?
“We are keeping our strategy on content production. We have a plan; we just had to slow it down during this period. The high period of lockdown in Portugal was March-May, so we are making a huge effort now to shoot as much as possible. We cannot plan the future, but our aim is to keep the plan that we had defined to 2020”.
By Federico Marzullo