Carphone UK marketing director in sudden exit

Carphone%20UKCarphone Warehouse UK marketing director Dominic Rowell is understood to be leaving the company after less than a year. It is not known if he has a job to go to.

Rowell joined the telecoms giant in January from McDonald’s, where he was UK head of marketing. At Carphone, he is responsible for retail and product marketing, as well as brand development, and reports to group marketing director Tristia Clarke.

Sources claim Rowell resigned from the company last week and that Carphone is looking for a replacement. A spokesman declined to comment as Marketing Week went to press.

Rowell is seen as one of the industry’s brightest young marketers. Prior to joining McDonald’s, he worked on the Walkers brand at Pepsico and spent seven years at Sainsbury’s, during which time he ran the high-profile advertising pitch that saw Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO retain the supermarket’s £47m advertising account.

He also worked on the launch of Nectar.

He was brought in as Carphone’s first UK marketing director, but sources say his remit was limited because of the power of the company’s senior management team, which includes Clarke, who has been with Carphone since 2000. She is responsible for marketing across the group’s 11 European markets.

As part of the expansion of the marketing team, in March this year Carphone appointed Bartle Bogle Hegarty head of account management Dominic Stinton as telecoms marketing director. He also reports to Clarke.

Carphone was launched in 1989 by Charles Dunstone. It was the first client of CHI & Partners and retains Matters Media for media planning and buying. It is Europe’s largest mobile phone retailer and introduced a “free” broadband service last year.