ONdigital Appoints First Sales And Marketing Director

Digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcaster, ONdigital, has appointed its first sales and marketing director to drive up subscriptions in the face of competition from Sky Digital.

The post has been given to Guy Laurence, currently Planet Hollywood’s executive vice-president of marketing for Europe; he joins ONdigital next month. Laurence will be responsible for brand development, advertising and promotion, direct marketing and sales and marketing to the retail trade.

Commenting on his appointment, Laurence says: “Whilst most public comment has focused on ONdigital versus its competition, I see the wider challenge as being converting the 70% of households who have resisted multi-channel TV so far… With a powerful marketing campaign to drive the public into retail outlets and an ongoing programme to strengthen the relationship with our retail partners we will see significant gains in the subscriber numbers.”

At the same time the DTT broadcaster, joint owned by Carlton and Granada, has announced a number of further senior management appointments. Operations director, John Egan, takes responsibility for business strategy, specifically in driving the development of ONdigital’s internet and interactive offerings. Jim Ratcliffe, commercial director, also takes responsibility for the customer management centre at ONdigital.

ONdigital recently announced that it had signed up 110,000 subscribers to its service between the launch in November last year and April this year (see ONdigital And Bush Offer Digital TV Sets For £500). Sky Digital reported 350,000 subscribers to its service, which launched in October 1998, by January this year. Of these, around 120,000 were brand new Sky customers; the rest had converted there existing analogue Sky subscription to digital (see BSkyB Profits Fall Following Sky Digital Launch, But Targets Are Met).

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