Goldfish hires marketing supremo from Motorola
Goldfish, the online financial services company, has appointed Motorola’s banking programmer for mobile commerce, Charlie Herbert, as marketing director.
Herbert starts mid-October and will report to Goldfish managing director Eric Stobart. The marketing position has been vacant since April, when marketing director Alison Bousfield left.
Prior to his job at Motorola, Herbert spent several years in NatWest’s e-banking division and his experience there is seen as pivotal to his appointment by Goldfish, which moved into banking this year.
Herbert’s appointment follows Stobart’s move from Lloyds TSB earlier this month, where he was senior group adviser.
Goldfish is a venture between Centrica, which owns 70 per cent, and Lloyds TSB, which owns the rest. The company uses TBWA/London and Manning Gottlieb Media for its advertising and media buying, and last year spent £2.6m on advertising.
The Goldfish credit card was originally a joint venture between Centrica and HFC Bank. But in December last year, Centrica announced it was going to split with HFC when their partnership expired on September 5, and relaunch Goldfish as an Internet bank.
Centrica had to pay £85m to HFC Bank for the rights to the existing 1 million Goldfish credit card customers, after a High Court case ruled that HFC Bank owned the customer data. This was on top of their agreement to buy the existing credit business for £650m.
