Guinness lures NatMags chief
Guinness has poached the National Magazine Company’s director of marketing strategy to fill a new position created to oversee the purchasing of its media buying and agency services.
Steven Sturgeon will become head of global purchasing for marketing.
He joins at a time when Guinness’s parent company Diageo is reviewing its global media and considering consolidation to cut costs. Last October, Carat was handed 60m worth of business as Diageo’s sole media buying agency. But doubt still hangs over other markets.
Sturgeon says: “This is an opportunity for me to join a world-famous company at a time when more and more organisations are assessing how effectively they are spending their marketing budgets.” Before joining NatMags in 1994, Sturgeon held a number of UK and international sales and marketing posts at British Airways, Xerox and BT. He has also worked for Ogilvy & Mather.
