Standard Life appoints Esberger

Standard Life has appointed former npower commercial director Simon Esberger to the new role of marketing operations director. His appointment comes amid a restructure of the asset management company’s marketing division.

Esberger will head up global marketing operations and will report to chief marketing officer Simon Gulliford (pictured). Gulliford was appointed early last year to oversee a restructure of Edinburgh-based Standard Life’s marketing (MW February 13, 2008).

He joins from XPotential, strategy implementation company, where he was strategic brand consultant but he has previously worked in senior marketing roles for companies including Cadbury, BT Cellnet and RWE npower.

The restructure put in place by Gulliford will see 75 roles being axed but 38 new roles created, leading to 37 redundancies by this spring (MW.co.uk December 15, 2008). The company has a 400-strong global marketing team, with 288 based in the UK.

Standard Life is also looking externally for a UK marketing division head, it is one of three new roles that will focus on customer life stages, and it will report into Andrew Gillespie, UK managing director of marketing. Gillespie, a former Barclays marketer, was also recruited by Gulliford as part of his turnaround plans for the financial services company.