ITV seeks global brand director following Granada mergers
ITV is to merge its Granada International and Granada Ventures business into one unit under plans announced by ITV Worldwide president and managing director Peter Iacono. The broadcaster is also creating a commercial brand director role to exploit ITV’s content across platforms and territories.
The unified business would continue to be run by Iacono, who joined ITV from Sony Pictures earlier this year and reports to Dawn Airey, managing director of ITV global content.
The broacaster says the move will give it the edge over rival global distributers, while the ITV Worldwide commercial brand director would lead “strengthened” brand and product development teams. The director would work closely with ITV Productions, ITV group marketing and the ITV network.
Airey says: “The merger makes real sense and demonstrates how serious we are about meeting our growth targets for this business. We are creating a bigger, better and more effective structure to allow us to grow our global content businesses further and faster.”
Announcing annual results for ITV last week, executive chairman Michael Grade said he has set a revenue target of 3 to 5% compound annual growth to 2010, rising to 5% to 2012, adding that the global content business aims to double its annual revenues by 2012.
