Biden ousted as BT power struggle claims first victim
The man responsible for radically restructuring BT’s consumer marketing has been ousted.
Michael Biden, sales and marketing director at BT’s personal communications division, will leave the company by the end of the month. Officially, BT says his role has been subsumed into that of the division’s managing director Stafford Taylor and other recent appointees.
It claims that Biden was brought in 18 months ago to put a marketing framework in place and that has now been achieved.
Biden was responsible for scrapping BT’s Customer Communications Unit last October and de-centralising all advertising and marketing into four separate divisions.
But sources within the company suggest that there was a personality clash between Biden and Taylor and conflict over the strategic direction of marketing. The departure of BT’s group managing director Michael Hepher in November further exposed Biden. The same sources suggest that Taylor has now given himself a six-week deadline to restructure the discipline once more. The only thing that has been ruled out is a return to a CCU-style structure.
Among Biden’s recent appointees, as part of his new structure, are the head of marketing communications Charlotte Pinder and Mike Wagner, head of network marketing. Their roles will be part of Taylor’s review.
