Harris joins William Hill as controller

William Hill has appointed MyTravel director of marketing Adam Harris to the newly-created role of marketing controller, as the company considers launching its first television campaign.

Harris has been briefed to “exploit the opportunities”, that the relaxation of the rules related to gambling advertising offers to operators, following the introduction of the Gambling Act 2005 in September last year.

Harris, who has already started, will report to group marketing director Chris Edgington. He is now in charge of a team of 30 that will cover online, retail marketing, product development and offline activity.

He joins from MyTravel, where he worked for two years. Harris says he turned down the opportunity to continue with the company after it merged with Thomas Cook last summer because he was reluctant to move to Peterborough, where the merged froup operations are now based.

Harris began his career at Britvic working on brands such as Tango and Robinsons, then moved to Buzz, the low-cost airline that was bought by Ryanair.

Following this, he spent three years at Carlsberg where he served as marketing controller, working on all the brewer’s lager brands.

Harris says his first task at William Hill is to evaluate the “right media” for the company. He says: “William Hill is very focused on getting an immediate return on any investment in marketing.”

Harris confirms that the company is looking at the possibility of a TV push and that there are a “number of ideas flying around”, but that nothing has been decided and there is, as yet, no approval to go ahead, though a decision is expected soon.