Monday
Missed last night's flight back from the family skiing holiday in Lake Tahoe in North America - don't ask - so am rather jetlagged for the Monday morning IDS departmental meeting. However, it is an upbeat start to the week. Managing director James Wildman briefs the team on Virgin Media's results for Q4 2009, which are pretty strong, and rewards Cathy Stacey and Sherisse Rogers with a bottle of champagne each for their creative ad breaks around Valentines Day. I then gather the digital team around the sales board for an update on the inventory booked over the previous week, before making business calls to agencies to make sure our business arrangements are on track. Spend the afternoon with Guy Martin, IDS partnerships director, presenting our new music video services on the V+ box and Virginmedia.com to John Baylon, director of digital trading at Starcom. Virgin Media is going back to its lifeblood, which is music and entertainment.
Tuesday
I usually get up at 6am to walk the dog but today my daughter wakes up at 5am, so she watches Pop World while I nurse a coffee like a Lemsip and catch up with the newspapers online - it is interesting to see what they are doing while the paywall debate rages on. Clear my email inbox on the train to work before going straight to the boardroom for the digital sales meeting, which is this week chaired by Caroline Forbes, who looks after the VivaKi Group. We booked a substantial amount of client business last week, which is pleasing, so everyone seems positive. At lunchtime, our sales controller Angus Mitchell - who does triathlons and Iron Man competitions for fun - rounds up the IDS running club for a run around Regents Park, Primrose Hill and Camden Lock. It is supposedly "light" at five miles, but it really hurts.
Wednesday
Breakfast meeting at the Sanderson with Jim Gyngell, head of online commercial operations at BLM Quantum - we catch up on industry gossip and discuss how he can spend more money with us. Back in the office, we sign a major advertising deal directly with a client, and we sell a third-party syndicated deal on Sky Player - which carries Virgin Media's Living and Bravo channels - to Microsoft. I also have a meeting with our legal team to check our contract with the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) is watertight, before catching up on the week's trading targets with IDS sales controllers Steve McHenry and Davina Barker. Finish the day with a couple of pints after work in the Crown and Sceptre on Great Titchfield Street with one of my best friends Craig Tuck, who is sales controller at MySpace.
Thursday
Start the day by working my way through the long list of calls I need to make, including Rachel Gascoigne-Day at Manning Gottlieb OMD, Nick Dixon at Vizeum and Steve Peacock at OMD. Then it's off to lunch at the Ivy, where Martin Plant, executive sales director at IDS and I entertain Adam Pace, head of digital buying at OPera. A poor day for celebrity spotting - I only see the lead singer of Faithless, which is rubbish. Return to see our search for a senior sales executive is going well - we have received two great CVs, so I set up second interviews with them for the following Friday. I then take a potential client to dinner at Pizza Express to discuss IDS taking on their third-party sales. Pretty hopeful this will go further.
Friday
Take Gareth Vaughan-Jones, account group leader, to present our new music video offering to Initiative's head of broadcast Chris Wright and the agency's digital and TV teams. The presentation goes well - the technology works first time and they ask plenty of questions. Then it's off to the Gaucho Grill for lunch with Emma Webster, head of trading at MG OMD and two of her team. Round off the week by catching up with Mike Bell from P&G and Dan Keat from Carat, and talking to our internal team about an exciting project involving long-form content on the Virgin website: Virgin Media is looking at developing a long-form video player, like SeeSaw for Virgin.
Weekend
Spend the weekend at home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, otherwise known as "the Cannes of Britain". Sunday morning is my time: I walk the dog and go to the pub for a quiet pint of Guinness and some cockles.
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