Marketing chief axed in NTL cull

Beleaguered NTL culls more than 40 marketing staff and ousts Hounsell in effort to minimise losses

NTL group marketing director Mike Hounsell has left the company as part of a restructure that is understood to have resulted in more than 40 job losses from the central marketing team.

NTL customer marketing director Charles Darley has also left the debt-laden company, which is thought to have slashed its advertising budget.

NTL, which is £12bn in debt, has already announced moves to cut its head count, which was 17,000 in September last year, to 13,000 by the end of this year.

In December, Marketing Week reported that NTL had plans to downsize the consumer division’s central marketing team and to give greater responsibility to its regional units (MW December 13). At the time it was thought that there were about 50 marketers working in the central consumer division, NTL Home.

An NTL spokeswoman says of Hounsell’s departure: “The job he was employed to do no longer exists.”

As part of the restructure, product marketing director Richard Harris has been promoted to the position of commercial director for NTL Home. He reports to managing director Stephen Carter.

Brand director Bart Michels – whose role is being extended to include communications – and customer insight and database marketing director Sandra Arkle will both report to Harris.

Sitting alongside Harris and reporting to Carter will be product marketers Bill Goodland (Internet director), Rod Henwood (TV director) and Jenny Lynn-Jones (telephony director).

Heads of marketing have all been appointed for regional business units, which are doubling the size of their marketing teams from three to six.