Egg marketer returns to the brand under Citis ownership

Patrick%20MuirCiti has appointed Egg launch marketer Patrick Muir as head of marketing for its UK consumer business. He will be reunited with the Egg brand, which Citi acquired from Prudential last year.

Muir replaces Alison Wright, who left the business in February without a job to go to. He will report to Bert Pijls, country business manager for Citi’s UK consumer business.

Wright joined Citi from Prudential following Egg’s acquisition in May last year (MW April 5, 2007). During her tenure, she moved its advertising from Mother to Publicis Groupe, which already handled Citi’s account globally, and oversaw a relaunch of the brand, which included scrapping the guinea pig icons in favour of Raoul the dolphin (MW December 20, 2007).

Muir, who starts at the end of this month, joins from Octopus Investments, where he has been building the company’s first marketing team and developing a marketing strategy (MW January 7).

He joined Egg in 1997 and rose to marketing director before leaving in 2004 to join rival US bank Morgan Stanley as its first UK vice-president and head of marketing (MW September 9, 2004). He was responsible for relaunching the Goldfish credit card after Morgan Stanley bought it from Lloyds TSB.

Muir left when Goldfish was spun off into a separate company (MW July 26, 2007). The credit card brand has since been sold to Barclays.

Citi is the world’s biggest financial services company but has a small retail base in the UK. It hopes to capitalise on the Egg brand in the UK to increase its personal finance base.