Media Telecoms

Director of marketing and audiences, BBC As audiences increasingly move towards digital platforms, the BBC has been on a mission to redefine itself for the digital age and reinvigorate equity in its master brand. As director of marketing and audiences, Paul Davies is an integral figure in that shift. Davies has been with the organisation since March 2020, leading the marketing activity for its vast portfolio of brands including BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds, BBC TV, BBC Radio, BBC Sport and major broadcasting events like Children in Need and Comic Relief. In his tenure, Davies has successfully helped grow iPlayer by 100% from 6 million users to over 12 million and Sounds by more than 25% from 3 million users to more than 4 million. He delivered the most-watched BBC TV episode of all time with the Line of Duty final and - only a few months into the role - delivered marketing for the channel’s Lockdown Learning service for families in the UK during the pandemic, which was created in just seven days.■

EMEA senior marketing director, Snap Inc.It’s been a year since Kate Bird joined Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat, as senior marketing director for EMEA, and a lot has happened since then. Snapchat released ‘Less Social Media. More Snapchat’ in February, a global campaign aimed at highlighting what makes it different from rival social platforms, with an emphasis on connection and friendship. This was its first-ever consumer facing brand campaign despite launching in 2011. So far, the investment seems to be paying off. The business’s latest Q1 financial results show a 10% uptick in active users and 21% revenue growth. Bird joined Snap after four years at Condé Nast, most recently as global vice-president of consumer revenue, responsible for the revenue growth of the publisher’s global brands and subscription models, including Vogue and GQ. Previous roles include six years at News UK, where she worked her way up to CMO and general manager at The Sun, and a stint as customer marketing manager at News International.■

media, telecoms & entertainment

Kate Bird

Paul Davies

Director marketing communications, EE and BT Telecoms giant EE has undergone some major changes in the last year, with Peter Jeavons, director of marketing communications for EE and BT at the helm. Jeavons already has a huge job, overseeing everything from shop marketing to customer comms, acquisition, brand and sponsorships, but it became even bigger as the business transitioned from its mobile roots into a broader subscription-based model encompassing broadband, TV, gaming and security, all connected under the EE master brand. Relaunching EE included rethinking its brand position, refreshing the brand and overhauling its creative platform. This culminated in the launch of its biggest marketing campaign in over a decade to communicate all the changes, which achieved an almost instant shift in consumer behaviour. At the start of the rebrand, BT dominated broadband sales with 95%, while EE only captured 5%. Since the campaign those number have shifted to 70% for EE and 30% for BT. The campaign also increased product consideration by 6%.■

Global managing director of brand, creative and media, Barclays (for work at Virgin Media O2) Simon Groves has just joined Barclays to head up brand, creative and media globally after more than two decades at O2 across two stints, most recently as director of brand and marketing of Virgin Media O2, a role he took up in July 2021 following the merger. He also spent six years as CMO at Tesco Mobile - itself a joint venture between Tesco and O2 - during which time he grew its user base to 5 million. Creativity was central to his marketing strategy at the telecoms brand, with a dash of humour thrown in for good measure. This was brought to life in recent ads featuring a Highland cow on a motorbike, a goat on a glider, and most recently, a walrus on a speedboat. Finding these innovative, entertaining ways to bring the utility brand to life helped Virgin Media grow its mobile base to 44.9 million in 2023, with 211,200 net additions, fuelled by a higher proportion of contract users and those making use of its connected devices.■

Simon Groves

Peter Jeavons

Global head of commercial partnership solutions, TikTok TikTok is on a mission to shift perceptions among non-users. The video entertainment app has seen meteoric growth in the last few years, in no small part driven by successive lockdowns during the pandemic that left millions scrolling through its content for hours each day. Best known in that period for its ability to send creators and brands viral, TikTok is now working to challenge that view, positioning the brand as a platform for long-term, sustainable growth. Leading that shift is its global head of commercial partnerships Trevor Johnson. Johnson has been with TikTok throughout its evolution. He first joined in February 2020 as head of marketing for its global business solutions for EUI, where he championed its B2B potential, coaxing major brands onto the platform, building relationships with senior leaders and establishing trust. In June this year, he was bumped up to lead those commercial partnerships on a global stage. With parent company ByteDance reportedly raking in $120bn (£93bn) in sales in 2023 - a growing proportion coming from advertisers - he’s already laid some strong foundations in establishing TikTok as a media channel to be reckoned with.■

Global CMO and director of strategic partners, Vodafone Business Amanda Jobbins has spent her career devising marketing plans for some of the biggest B2B tech companies in the world, working for brands including Sage, Oracle and, most recently, Vodafone Business, where she has been global CMO since 2019. It’s clearly a good fit, with Jobbins admitting she thrives on the intellectual challenge of B2B marketing and the need to attract attention in a setting in which attention is scarce and there are huge demands on time. Identifying pain points for business owners is an important part of that strategy for Vodafone Business. In April, it launched the ‘Your Business Can’ campaign, aimed at helping small- and medium-sized companies source digital tools to help boost their productivity and security. The campaign was inspired by brand research showing 40% of customers lacked this knowledge. "You’ve always got to be flexible and agile in how you deploy marketing strategies to achieve the outcome that you want," Robbins told Marketing Week of her approach.■

Amanda Jobbins

Trevor Johnson

Chief viewer officer, ITV Having been CMO at ITV for three and a half years, Jane Stiller was promoted to the newly created role of chief viewer officer in July as the broadcaster reshapes its marketing function to “grow audiences and revenue”. The new position brings ITV's brand, marketing, insights, digital product, subscription and distribution teams together for the first time, with the aim of putting viewers at the heart of everything it does. 2023 was a challenging year for ITV. In the first six months of the year, it reported a 79% drop in pre-tax profits. Then in May, its reputation took a hit amid the fallout from the scandal involving This Morning presenter Philip Schofield. But it weathered the storm, in large part thanks to the work of Stiller and her team in creating a resilient brand. Seeing the value of brand, the broadcaster is investing an additional £15m in marketing this year. It has described marketing as a vital tool for attracting viewers to its streaming platform ITVX, which saw monthly active users increase by 19% in 2023, with total streaming hours up 26%. This helped drive 19% growth in digital revenues to £490m.■

Senior director, head of marketing, Netflix UK & Ireland Netflix has cracked down on account sharing in the last couple of years, in what some saw as a risky strategy to boost falling subscriber numbers. Its latest results for the three months to the end of June left the streaming platform vindicated though, with an additional 8 million subscribers signing up to its new mix of plans, a 16% year-on-year increase in paid memberships, leading to a 16.8% rise in revenues. Instrumental to that success has been the work of its senior team of marketers, including Rajiv Nathwani in the UK, who has led on efforts to communicate paid sharing in a way that dampens backlash, while also plugging the platform’s ever-growing list of original shows and advertising options. Such has been the buzz around shows like Bridgerton, that Shonda Rimes’ adaptation has supposedly boosted the UK economy by £275m and supported almost 5,000 businesses over the past five years. Nathwani has been with Netflix for almost a decade, having first joined to manage its social media in 2015, after previously carrying out the same role at BBC Studios.■

Rajiv Nathwani

Jane Stiller

CMO, Giffgaff Giffgaff’s Sophie Wheater has proven herself an incredibly effective CMO for the mobile network brand. In 2023, sales edged toward the £600m mark, with a reported revenue of £574.9m for its latest financial year, up from £559m, off the back of a slew of new products and an updated brand look and feel, including its ‘Ode to Bad’ campaign. The company also hasn’t shied away from the hard conversations with Wheater at the helm. Making carbon "part of the conversation" has enabled it to remove 52 tonnes of carbon from its environmental footprint over the past year, for example, 14% of its annual media plan. It’s also now an accredited B Corp. She assumed the top marketing role at Giffgaff in 2018, after more than a decade in senior roles at O2 but, within two years of taking on the CMO role, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Wheater underwent chemotherapy and surgery while continuing to work as a marketing leader at the mobile network company, an experience that has seen her become a passionate advocate for others working with cancer.■

Director of sports marketing, Sky and Now Sports broadcasting is a competitive space with both Amazon and TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport) eager to cut into Sky Sports’ market share. On the frontline of protecting that share is marketing director Dave Stratton. Stratton has been with the broadcaster for more than three years. He first joined in 2021 as the marketing director for its broadband and connectivity business, a role that spanned advertising, customer management and communications, brand strategy and product marketing. Directly before that, he’d spent five years at rival BT, a move into tech that followed several years in food and drink. At Sky he’s focusing on value at a time when customers are weighing up budgets. It is looking to broaden its appeal by showcasing the wealth of sports it has to offer, including tennis, cricket and golf, rather than only spotlighting football. The quality of Sky’s marketing reflects its investment in marketers. Since 2022, the business has run its Marketing Excellence Programme to provide the marketing team with training and development to develop best-in-class skills, which seems to be paying off.■

Dave Stratton

Sophie Wheater

new

re-entry

new

Charities & not-for-profit

FOOD & DRINK RETAIL

GENERAL RETAIL

Media, telecoms & entertainment

TRAVEL, LEISURE & HOSPITALITY

FINANCIAL SERVICES

FMCG

Food & drink

analysis

methodology

judges

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, UTILITIES, HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES

Consumer tech, manufacturing, property and automotive