Media & Telecoms

media & telecoms

CMO and inclusion and diversity director Channel 4 In what has been an extraordinary 12 months for Channel 4, its CMO Zaid Al-Qassab has been continuing to fly the flag for diversity and inclusion across the channel’s marketing efforts. This includes the launch of its ‘Altogether Different’ campaign, which showcased the collective differences of people across the UK. At the time, he said it “reflects why Channel 4 was created – to authentically represent unheard voices and the cultural diversity of the UK”. It followed the channel’s ‘Black to Front’ project from September 2021, which saw the broadcaster partner with more than 60 brands to ensure its entire programming schedule was fronted by black talent. Al-Qassab said the project was devised to address the lack of diversity in programmes and advertising. Meanwhile, in June, Channel 4 marked the 50th anniversary of Pride with more than 80 Pride celebrations around the nation as part of its ‘Proud All Over’ campaign. Al-Qassab said it was the broadcaster’s way of celebrating the UK’s smaller Pride events “which are in many ways even more important in breaking down barriers than those in the big cities”.■

Zaid Al-Qassab

Marketing director The Guardian Last year The Guardian celebrated its 200th anniversary, but as it continues to build momentum with its purposeful strategy, marketing director Kate Davies is looking to the future as she leads the newspaper’s marketing efforts. “We were adamant that we didn’t want it to just be a celebration of the past,” said Davies on last year’s bicentenary campaign. “We wanted to talk to our future.” Since then, The Guardian has launched its new Saturday magazine, with a campaign titled ‘Forgotten how to Saturday?’, taking the supplement in a new direction as part of the bold look and strategy the newspaper has been pursuing in recent years. Its efforts were rewarded in June 2022, when the magazine won three awards, plus a highly commended prize, at the 2022 British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) Talent Awards. Meanwhile, in July, Davies and her team announced the opening up of a new internship on the newspaper’s marketing and communications team for sixth months, and importantly paid, without the need to have a degree to encourage applicants from underrepresented backgrounds.■

Kate Davies

Director of marketing and audiences BBC This year marked 100 years of the BBC, and was therefore a particularly busy one for director of marketing and audiences Paul Davies. In February, the broadcaster brought BBC Three back to our TV screens after six years off air. The move saw Davies, who joined the BBC in March 2020, take the opportunity to open itself back up to harder to reach, younger audiences. From celebrating BBC 6 Music’s 20th anniversary and having Catherine, Princess of Wales read the CBeebies bedtime story, to the launch of ‘This is our BBC’, a brand campaign celebrating the broadcaster’s centenary with familiar faces, the BBC’s campaigns in the last year highlight the breadth of the service’s offering at a pivotal moment for the corporation. Outside of his work at the BBC, Davies is also host and producer of ‘Makers of the Universe’, a podcast interviewing creative talent who share the stories behind their work. His guests have included advertising stalwart Sir John Hegarty, CEO of The Dots, Pip Jamieson and Suede frontman Brett Anderson.■

Paul Davies

Director of brand and marketing Virgin Media O2 Following the £31bn merger of Virgin Media and O2 in June last year, and the departure of their respective marketing bosses, Simon Groves – a 20-year O2 veteran – was appointed director of brand and marketing at the newly-created company. Since taking on the role, Groves has outlined the dual-brand strategy he is pursuing for the merged business, stating the “powerful equity” both brands have is “too good to scrap”. Virgin Media O2 launched its first joint proposition under his leadership in October 2021. An integrated UK campaign, ‘Volt’ looked to demonstrate to customers the benefits of the two brands coming together. Over the past year Groves has also been working to merge the marketing teams of both brands, which he described as “highly complementary”. Then in May 2022, Groves oversaw O2 become the official network sponsor for ITV’s Love Island as it looked to position O2 as the best network for roaming, building on its ‘Roam Freely’ campaign.■

Simon Groves

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Group brand and consumer marketing director BT Group As BT and EE’s marketing boss, Pete Jeavons is driving the brands’ responsibility in playing a meaningful role in topics that matter. He took on the group role at the start of 2019, having previously led brand marketing at EE. As a marketing leader with purpose, Jeavons is not afraid to take on what he describes as the “spiky topics”. In an attempt to tackle online abuse of football players and pundits, BT launched its ‘Hope United’ campaign, which brought together 21 high profile footballers to educate the nation on online hate via a digital skills platform. A follow up tackling sexism was launched ahead of the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 tournament. A man on a mission, he believes a brand with the size and scale of BT has “as much responsibility to do something [to help] a national problem as anybody else”. While BT went into the campaign with no sales motivations, the long-term metrics show an impact on BT’s brand affinity, which Jeavons said is usually difficult to change. The campaign also impacted measures such as being a ‘national champion’ and ‘doing good things’, up 12 points and 14 points respectively.■

Pete Jeavons

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Marketing director The Walt Disney Company Clare Parker has spent nearly two decades working at The Walt Disney Company across its vast portfolio of brands. In that time, she has developed extensive experience building some of the most recognisable entertainment brands across the world. She describes herself as an inclusive and empathetic leader, and one which champions the work of women in business, evidenced in the fact she co-leads the Women at Disney working group. This focus on empowering women feeds through into Disney’s wider marketing strategy. In August 2022, the brand launched the Ultimate Princess Celebration: Time to Shine, a new role model-led initiative created by Disney Princess and global educational charity, The Female Lead, and fronted by footballer and Lioness Captain, Leah Williamson. The campaign was created to inspire and grow the confidence of young children as they prepare to start school. As the streaming war heats up, Disney is also showing it is a powerful force, with Disney+ adding 14.4 million customers, ahead of expectations. It now has 221.1 million subscribers, when combined with Hulu and ESPN+, meaning it beats Netflix’s latest tally of 220.7 million customers.■

Clare Parker

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CMO ITV Jane Stiller is a dynamic marketing leader who brought a wealth of FMCG and retail knowledge with her with she joined ITV from Marks & Spencer as director of media in 2019, before swiftly taking on the CMO role the following year. Under Stiller’s watch, ITV’s ‘Get Britain Talking’ mental health awareness drive has gone from strength to strength, with a number of star-studded campaigns leading to more than 100 million conversations. Following its success, ITV has now upped this target and is hoping to initiate 200 million conversations by 2023. Digital has also been a major focus for ITV over the past year, as it preps the launch of its ITVX streaming platform, part of its plan to deliver £750m of digital revenues by 2026. Total digital revenues were up 22% overall in the first half of the year, as the soon-to-be-replaced ITV Hub delivered its best-ever digital viewing figures, up 8% year on year to 814 million streams. Meanwhile, total external revenue grew 8% over the half to £1.68bn.■

Jane Stiller

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Chief customer officer Tesco Mobile Since Rachel Swift joined Tesco Mobile as CMO in 2020, she has been pulling the brand closer to the Tesco masterbrand, a move she says has “really helped shift the dial” across key metrics. It has increased its pay monthly customer base by more than 10% since launching its ‘Supermarket Mobile’ positioning and the brand is now joint number one with EE in terms of prompted consideration among Tesco customers, according to its research. It also saw a record market share in terms of net additions in Q2 2022 and outperformed the market average for net customer growth, as well as achieving a 2% penetration increase among Tesco customers over the past year. Swift has said that while the world of mobile networks is not hugely renowned for its customer service, leaning into the customer experience is a strategy that is seeing the mobile provider grow; it recently ranked fourth overall in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index from the Institute of Customer Service, the only telco to make it into the top 50.■

Rachel Swift

CMO Global Cilesta Van Doorn joined media and entertainment group Global from Virgin Media in October 2021, following its merger with O2 where she was executive director for brand and marketing. At Global, she heads up the group’s marketing team of 80, across brand and commercial marketing, events, communications, enterprise and customer support. As Global continues its mission of delivering positive change, with radio stations such as Heart, Smooth and Capital Xtra in its roster, as well as its outdoor advertising offer, Van Doorn is leading the company’s marketing through a period of growth, particularly when it comes to the company’s Global Player streaming service. From Capital Radio’s foray into NFTs this summer with the Summertime Ball, to the launch of Global’s new daily podcast, The News Agents with Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, it looks like Global is indeed pushing boundaries under its new marketing leadership, as the company boasts of reaching more than 25 million people across the UK weekly as it ramps up its offering to audiences.■

Cilesta Van Doorn

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CMO Giffgaff As Giffgaff’s CMO, Sophie Wheater has championed insight-led marketing in the four years she has been with the company, helping the brand win Uswitch network of the year three times, secure Which? recommended provider status, and substantially grow its member base. Wheater claims that as a result of working “bloody hard” on retention, Giffgaff now has one of the most trusted relationships with customers in the mobile market. This has been achieved through price transparency, flexible top-ups, and its community of ‘power users’ that are promoted and valued by the company. Wheater is also a passionate advocate for the thousands of people working and living with cancer in the UK, calling on corporations to support employees with better sickness policies. She was diagnosed with breast cancer two years into her Giffgaff role, and has talked openly about the challenges of managing a career while undergoing treatment, commending her employer for its support. “The policies that surround sickness at work I would urge everybody to look at, because I was in a lucky enough position that I had the human understanding and empathy of my CEO,” Wheater said.■

Sophie Wheater

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