Vodafone picks chief to drive mobile marketing

Vodafone has promoted Joanna Cutting to head its mobile marketing arm, Vodafone Target. She replaces Sally-Anne Burwell, who left earlier this year.

Cutting will oversee the division, which has been moved into the UK enterprise business unit, as part of her role as senior manager of commercial partnerships at Vodafone.

A spokeswoman says/ “The mobile marketing sector is evolving and is becoming more of a priority for big brands. We needed to look at the way we addressed it.”

A recent survey by Vodafone Target found that 80% of advertising agencies are planning to use mobile in forthcoming campaigns, but less than a third thought they had the necessary skills to do so effectively.

Cutting says: “The success of mobile marketing depends on cross-network capabilities, as brands will expect to reach the whole mobile user base, and not have pockets of customers excluded by networks that don’t support certain products.”

Meanwhile, Vodafone is to axe about 200 jobs from its group marketing division – as exclusively predicted by Marketing Week (April 6) – giving local operations more marketing control.