Abbey hunts for marketing chief
Abbey National’s top marketing job has been axed, following an organisational review last week. Janet Connor who was retail marketing director, has been moved sideways to another position at the bank.
Abbey National is now looking outside the company to recruit a chief marketer, who will be in charge of all marketing, branding, product strategy, and customer insights for the bank.
Connor has been with the bank since 1990. In 2001, she was promoted to retail marketing director (MW May 3, 2001) and called a review of Abbey National’s &£14.2m advertising business.
She reappointed Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper to the business in October 2001, and has since spent millions of pounds on recruiting ex-EastEnder’s star Martin Kemp to be the face of its new advertising.
Connor has moved to the customer sales division to head the bank’s “Outreach” programme, responsible for targeting Abbey National’s 8 million “dormant” customers.
The changes to Abbey National’s organisation follow the bank’s decision to move away from businesses outside its core personal financial services operations. The new structure now includes three customer-facing divisions: customer sales; customer propositions, which will be headed by the new marketing chief; and customer operations.
The retail banking marketing team sits in the customer propositions unit, while business banking has been moved to customer sales. Michael Campbell remains as business banking marketing director. Gary Hockey-Morley, who previously headed the business banking division, has been appointed product strategy director within the customer propositions unit.
