Wilkinson Sword fills UK marketing director post

Wilkinson Sword has poached General Mills marketer Elizabeth MacGregor to be its UK marketing director. She replaces Richard Nall, who is leaving the company at the end of June. It is unclear whether he has a job to go to.

MacGregor, the senior marketing manager at the cereal company, will start at the beginning of September.

According to a Wilkinson Sword spokeswoman, Nall has not actually been working as UK marketing director since March – he has been filling the role of European segment head for disposables.

Claire Hodge, the former marketing director for snack foods at United Biscuits, is acting as UK marketing director temporarily. Hodge had been on maternity leave from UB, but it was announced in February that she was not returning owing to a shake-up of the company’s marketing team after its acquisition of Jacob’s Bakery last year (MW February 24).

There have been a number of changes in Wilkinson Sword’s management team since the appointment of European vice-president Colin Hutchison, a former McVities’s marketing chief, last year (MW May 6, 2004). In September, UK and Eire business director David Bainbridge left. He was replaced by Nick Powell, who had worked with Hutchison at UB.

Hodge is not the first interim marketing director to fill in for Nall at Wilkinson Sword. In 2003, Nall, an officer in the Territorial Army, was called up for service in the second Gulf War (MW March 23, 2003).