BT appoints consumer marketing chief

BT has promoted Matthew Dearden to director of marketing for its consumer division. He takes over the newly created role today (May 19).

Dearden (pictured), who was previously director of voice services, will lead a new central marketing team and take on overall budgetary responsibility for the BT Retail division’s marketing. He will report to John Petter, managing director of BT consumer, who was promoted to managing director of BT Retail’s consumer division earlier this month.

Deardon, who joined BT in 2004, has also held the roles of chief executive of BT Directories and general manager of voice assistance services. Prior to that, he was director of telephony at Telewest Broadband and he has also worked as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble.

Petter says: “BT operates in a highly competitive environment where our core markets are converging and prices continue to fall. It’s essential that we get closer to the customer, aligning our resources to deliver increased brand perception and better integrated consumer campaigns.”

Petter was promoted on May 1 after Gavin Patterson was promoted to chief executive replacing Ian Livingstone, who took over from Ben Verwaayen as group chief executive.

BT Global services UK division’s chief executive, Tim Smart, has also announced he is leaving the company to take on the same role at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.