“Having run a safety business, not a lot keeps me up at night,” quipped ITV CEO Carolyn McCall as she wrapped up her keynote conversation at MIPCOM on Monday.

The former CEO of EasyJet took over the head post at ITV in 2017 and has spent the year since shaping a new vision for the company. And while running a TV company may not compare to getting hundreds of thousands of people in and out of the sky everyday unharmed, ITV is a major concern in a significantly disrupted industry, with McCall in the hot seat to see it safely through the next few years.

In a half-hour keynote conversation at the annual Cannes conference and market, she made it clear that the core of that vision will be ITV’s relationship to the consumer and how it can be strengthened – something media companies around the world need to focus on.

“You have to start from the consumer perspective,” she said in her opening remarks. “Viewers will view [great] content – what we have to do is make sure we have a relationship with them, and that we understand them.”

That effort, on which the company will spend £60 million over three years, will see it work to transform its ITV Hub from a catch-up VOD service to one that compels consumers to spend more time and money with the company. A crucial aspect of the new vision will be a direct-to-consumer strategy, she emphasized, which will seek to both deepen ITV’s reach with consumers and generate income from a new stream. Tactics will include an SVOD service and ITV programming brand-related extensions, such as live events.

“It will be revenue and profit from a completely different pool. We don’t do that now – we don’t take money directly from consumers right now.”

Underpinning that is an investment on the data and analytics side of the business, with the recent hires of the company’s first chief data officer, Karine Serfaty, and its first group chief technology officer. “That’s the shift,” she noted, in reference to balancing ITV’s broadcast concern and its Studio concern, a business that now encapsulates 40 production companies worldwide. “Studios remains an incredibly important part of what we do. It ensures we have a diversified group… we wouldn’t be making the right shifts if we weren’t also looking at doing something directly with the consumer.”

McCall’s keynote itself marked an interesting shift in the general themes that have dominated media-conference keynotes in recent years. Instead of focusing on quality/quantity of programming, viewing habits or, simply, Netflix, McCall’s keynote largely focused on the one thing that is often glossed over: the consumer as an individual.

While Netflix has changed the game by altering consumer expectations of the entertainment experience, it also proved that you can build an empire $9.99 at a time. And that’s the sweet spot ITV is looking to tap: fan events that can generate both data and ticket sales, a VOD service that doesn’t just cost money but makes it, and experiences that keep each consumer logged in/tuned in longer. And at each point, the opportunity to delight fans.