BA announces new head of marketing after restructure
British Airways has announced that Sara Dunham will take up the newly created role of marketing, retail and direct, as a part of a team restructure.
Dunham is currently the head of retail and direct and will additionally take on responsibility for all marketing communications. She will be accountable for the global marketing strategy and marketing activity reporting to chief commercial officer, Andrew Crawley.
Dunham joined the airline in 2001 and has worked in a variety of roles including marketing for the UK and Ireland, product and new business and brand customer proposition. Prior to joining BA she worked in various marketing roles at Hasbro Toys and Kingsmill.
The previous head of marketing, Abigail Comber will move to the position of head of customer. Comber follows a trend of top marketers moving to customer roles. As an example, in December 2014, Robin Terrell was announced as the head of customer for Tesco as CMO Matt Atkinson left the company.
BA has restructured the team in the hope of making marketing activity for the brand more coordinated, according to Crawley in a statement.
A spokesperson for the company told Marketing Week that marketing teams were previously separated in different departments, with some split in the commercial department, and others in the brands and marketing department. The teams will now all be within a commercial department.
Frank van der Post left his role as managing director for brand and customer experience in December (2014) after leading successful campaigns for BA in the 2012 Olympics and the ‘To Fly to Serve’ campaign in 2011, which markedly improved profit and customer perceptions.
More recently, the brand has faced increasing pressure as EasyJet and Ryanair have expanded their business portfolios over the past year.
