CMO, UKTV
In July last year, UKTV officially went live with its new masterbrand U. Designed to unite streaming and digital at the BBC Studios-owned broadcaster, the switchover was masterminded by CMO Penny Brough. Changing the name of a brand comes with risk, but for Brough, planning for “long-term growth” meant the change was necessary.
The star-studded launch, featuring pop icon Cher, was the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes graft by Brough and her team, as they pored over what U’s USP really was, carrying out significant consumer research and, once they’d decided on the concept, creating nearly 20,000 new assets. In fact, it amounted to UKTV’s most “significant spend ever” and the “most significant activity across the whole of the business” in its history, according to the CMO in an interview with Marketing Week.
Brough’s no stranger to pressure though, with a 20-year-career that reads like a who’s who of broadcasters, from BBC Studios, to Channel 4 to ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global).
EMEA senior marketing director, Snap Inc.
Snapchat has been described by major brands as a ‘magic spark’ when it comes to connecting with Gen Z. The app has set itself apart from many of its social competitors by positioning the platform as primarily a messaging tool, rather than one driven by likes and follows, with its AR lenses and creator functions only adding to the appeal.
Building out this strategic positioning has an awful lot to do with Kate Bird, senior marketing director for the EMEA region at owner Snap Inc. Only a few months into her role, Bird and the team unveiled ‘Less Social Media. More Snapchat’, a global campaign that explained exactly what makes it different from rival social platforms, with an emphasis on connection and friendship.
It has certainly seen a boost in users off the back of it. The app reached 469 million daily active users in the second quarter of 2025, up 9 million from the previous quarter, and in 2024 there was also a more than 40% year-on-year increase in creators posting content.
Kate Bird
Penny Brough
CMO, Channel 4
Having been MD at Channel 4’s in-house agency 4creative for two years prior to becoming the broadcaster's CMO in July 2024, Katie Jackson was able to hit the ground running, with her mission to better align the content and marketing strategies. This has included the development of a shared language with which to discuss Channel 4’s brand identity and encouraging her team to dream up bold ideas.
Last year, the CMO introduced the concept of ‘What if’ to prompt employees to think differently. The initiative was the foundation of a reactive marketing stunt in response to Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to abandon fact-checkers for Facebook. Channel 4 News launched a national print ad and touring van emblazoned with: ‘We fact check the Zuck out of our news’.
Jackson also spearheaded the broadcaster’s Paralympics campaign, ‘Considering What?’, as well as its ‘Every Body Moves’ initiative, which focused on connecting disabled people with inclusive activities in their local communities. It was a bold step away from the ‘Superhumans’ campaign, but it paid off, with the Paris 2024 Paralympics generating Channel 4’s largest viewing audience since the London 2012 Games.
Director of marketing and audiences, BBC
The BBC’s director of marketing and audiences, Paul Davies, has delivered true transformation at the BBC. At one time an under-utilised, under-appreciated function, marketing is now an invaluable tool in helping the broadcaster navigate the incredibly competitive waters in which it finds itself as the streaming titans become increasingly dominant.
To do that, Davies demanded a different output from the team. He focused on driving audiences to digital and VOD platforms to shift perceptions of the BBC from a 100-year-old institution to a modern media brand. He also instigated a brand refresh to focus attention on some of its most recognisable brands. A holographic Dalek over Cardiff Bay, anyone?
But Davies also worked hard on changing culture. A three-year programme with Amazing If offered staff careers guidance and access to inspirational speakers. This initiative was complemented by digital upskilling sessions and a new weekly team ritual, ‘Win of the Week’, celebrating individual successes over the past seven days.
All of which has helped turn the team from service provider to strategic partner,. It also led to the BBC delivering double-digit growth in marketing impact and being named Marketing Week’s 2024 Marketing Team of the Year.
Paul
Davies
Katie Jackson
Chief brand officer, VodafoneThree
VodafoneThree represents the recent merging of two successful UK telecoms brands. In its latest annual report, Vodafone reported a shared operations NPS of +81% and organic service revenues up 5.1% globally, despite an overall loss. Meanwhile, in its Q3 2024 results, the last published before the May 2025 merger, Three UK reported a 9% growth in revenue and a 2% growth in its active customer base.
At the helm of the new combined marketing operation is chief brand officer Maria Koutsoudakis, who before the merger worked at Vodafone for almost seven years, bringing experience from P&G and Marks & Spencer to the role. She is leading VodafoneThree’s first joint campaign, ‘Two networks are better than one’, aiming to highlight customer benefits of the merger, such as increased coverage, faster speeds and fewer signal ‘not-spots’.
She was previously behind Vodafone’s pivotal repositioning towards being ‘The Nation’s Network’ during its 40th anniversary last year, alongside a growth in its sponsorship efforts. At the time, Koutsoudakis told Marketing Week it was an “ambitious” investment and that marketing was accountable for “delivering growth for every pound" spent.
Group chief commercial officer and CMO, Vodafone Business
Vodafone Business is on a journey to be recognised as a digital services and connectivity provider within B2B, with its commercial chief and CMO, Amanda Jobbins, being an instrumental part of that shift.
Jobbins has said that how the team uses brand assets and codes has been “critical” in communicating the distinction with its consumer business, and last year kicked off a dedicated B2B campaign to elevate that work further. ‘Your Business Can’ was designed to give SMEs a helping hand in sourcing the digital tools they might need to boost productivity and security, as well as boost awareness of the business solutions that Vodafone offers beyond mobile.
A highly experienced B2B marketer, prior to joining Vodafone, Jobbins worked as global CMO for Infor and led teams at Oracle, Dell and Cisco. That’s fed through into a passion for technology innovation in the marketing arena, using it to enhance campaigns, propositions and marketing operations.
Her key piece of advice for other marketers working in B2B is to "keep it simple and be consistent", something she believes is essential in driving brand recognition.
Amanda
Jobbins
Maria Koutsoudakis
Vice-president, head of marketing UK&I, Netflix
Netflix prides itself on its agility. In its marketing that means local or regional teams are empowered to make decisions without battling through layers of hierarchical signoffs.
In the UK, that means a lot of autonomy is held by the likes of Rajiv Nathwani, who’s been at Netflix for a decade after leading on social media in his previous roles at the BBC. Empowered from the top, Nathwani’s marketing function has been unafraid to test concepts and lean into UK humour and sensibilities to build brand strength.
The team earned substantial credit for the success of Netflix’s breakout series Adolescence, not just in the UK but globally. And last December, Netflix partnered with Just Eat and Tottenham Hotspur FC on the UK launch of the second series of Squid Game, which involved Spurs players taking part in a version of the infamous ‘dalgona cookie challenge’ featured in the programme.
It’s clearly cutting through. Despite price hikes and the introduction of new ad tiers, Netflix achieved its largest subscriber growth ever in the final three months of 2024 – the last time it reported subscriber numbers – adding a huge 19 million users.
Senior vice-president of marketing, BBC Studios
Now over a year into her job, Shelley Macintyre has praised BBC Studios as an inspiring and enriching place to work. A former CMO at frozen ready meal brand Allplants, Macintyre stepped into her current role in July 2024, tasked with generating commercial and cultural value at the BBC’s commercial arm, via its portfolio of global consumer brands.
That has included steering the cultural juggernaut that is Bluey. Despite being just seven years old, the Australian kids’ show is now a billion-dollar business, with a movie set to hit cinemas in 2027. It has aired in 140 countries, with audiences consuming 95,000 years’ worth of content. Macintyre’s long-term ambition is for Bluey to have 100% awareness and become “the next Mickey Mouse”.
To support this, she’s made some big internal changes, hiring three senior brand marketers for the Bluey team, while also recruiting across its consumer products, digital and licensing divisions to bolster the department.
She’s also transitioned the approach at BBC Studios away from being genre-led toward a brand-led strategy, with dedicated teams for Bluey, and other brands such as Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing.
Shelley
Macintyre
Rajiv
Nathwani
Director of brand and marketing, Virgin Media O2
Having previously served as O2 brand and creative director from 2017 to 2020, Rachel Swift joined Virgin Media O2 as its brand and marketing director in September 2024, tasked with refreshing O2's brand strategy post-merger.
But rather than implement unnecessary change and complexity, Swift opted to go back to the brand’s foundations, unveiling a new platform and positioning highlighting its founding message of essentialness. The ‘Essential for Living’ campaign, created with long-standing creative partner VCCP, centred on a simple but compelling 60-second film of the first few moments in a newborn’s life. “This is about looking back in order for us to progress,” she told Marketing Week.
The creative sits alongside wider efforts spearheaded by Swift to engage new audiences, such as its sponsorship of Baller League UK, part of its plans to target a younger customer.
Such output in less than a year speaks to Swift’s deep experience of the O2 brand. Her previous stint at the business came before a five-year spell at Tesco Mobile, where she substantially grew the brand’s customer base.
Chief viewer and customer officer, ITV
Jane Stiller has been placed at the forefront of ITV’s plans to reshape its marketing function as it looks to grow audiences and revenue. Having been CMO for nearly four years, Stiller was promoted to the significantly expanded role of chief viewer officer in July last year, adding customer to the title more recently. It's a role that brings together brand, marketing, insights, digital product subscription and distribution teams.
Since joining the broadcaster in 2019, after four years in marketing roles at M&S, Stiller has consistently proven her value. She’s credited for her part in the success of the launch of ITVX in 2022, the broadcaster’s new-look streaming service. It achieved an unprecedented 1 billion streams in the first quarter of 2025 off the back of increased marketing investment, and also higher-than-expected growth in total advertising revenue in 2024, driven by the buzz around the UEFA Euros and Love Island.
ITVX is now the UK’s fastest-growing major streaming platform, and a new deal announced with Disney+ to share content across each other’s services will no doubt boost its growth further.
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