Board-level marketer will ‘remove sleaze’ from Sport

Sport Media Group, the new owner of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport, is looking to create a board-level role for its new marketing director.

The marketer will be tasked with moving the image of the titles away from soft pornography and the sex trade into lads’ mag territory. The candidate will sit on a four-person board listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

The appointment of a marketing director will be a first for the papers, which have been running for over 20 years, and were recently acquired by Sport Media Group for £50m.

Loaded founder James Brown, the new consultant editor-in-chief of the titles, will play a key role in the appointment process and the shaping of its marketing.

The board of Sport Media Group includes chairman Simon Hulme-Kendall, managing director Andrew Fickling, Andrew Fletcher, chief financial officer, and Nigel Blythe-Tinker, non-executive director.

Fickling says the group is looking at three options to drive its marketing forward. “We will either create a board-level appointment, employ one below board level, or outsource all our marketing to a creative agency,” he says.

Fickling adds that the Daily and Sunday Sport have recently undertaken some in-paper promotion but have never undertaken any serious above-the-line marketing.

The Daily Sport sells nearly 110,000 copies a day while the Sunday title sells around 95,000.

The change in strategy has been spawned by the takeover of Sport Media Group. The group has signed up new mass-market advertisers, including TV sports broadcaster Setanta.

The company latest financial figures show it reported a 24% in turnover to £11.3m and a 25% increase in pre-tax profit to £5.4m in year ending on July 31.