Fagan takes DSG media role
DSG International, the electrical retailer, has appointed Elizabeth Fagan to the newly-created role of group media director.
The announcement ends months of confusion surrounding Fagan’s role at the group, which includes the Curry’s and PC World retail chains, as well as Dixons stores and mobile phone subsidiary The Link.
Her new role will be to manage the group’s contracts with all its advertising and media agencies, as well as develop relationships with new media agencies.
John Clare, chief executive of DSG, says: “With increasing media fragmentation and our growing international scale, Elizabeth is tasked with ensuring that our core retail brand propositions are delivered to both existing and potential customers.”
The group began reviewing the structure of its marketing department in February 2004 after Fagan, then marketing director, moved to become managing director of The Link.
She was not directly replaced, but retained interim responsibility for marketing across the group, and by July 2005 the group had reappointed her as marketing director.
It is thought that she was briefed to scrutinise the marketing spend of all the group’s brands, and in November she reportedly approached an agent/client intermediary with a brief encompassing all the group’s subsidiaries, sparking speculation the group would move its &£100m account out of incumbent agency M&C Saatchi.
DSG declined to comment on the speculation and confusion surrounded her future at the group when she was reported to be leaving in November. However, in January DSG confirmed Fagan would remain with the group, to carry out a review of the company’s working practices in the role of “project director”.
