Burberry appoints BBC Worldwide’s Daniel Heaf as senior VP of digital commerce

Speaking to The Drum, Heaf described Burberry as a creative company with “huge digital ambitions”, which were the factors that drew him to the role.

During his tenure at BBC Worldwide, Heaf led projects which saw the broadcaster’s digital revenues soar from around three per cent to over 13 per cent, accelerated by initiatives such as licensing partnerships with Netflix and Hulu.

“When I started at BBCW it was clear while digital was important it had underperformed from a financial perspective, and was a bit of a concern in that way.

“All recognised it was an important part of what needed to be done, so we didn’t need to convince anyone in the business of that but getting it to a place where it was making a substantial, significant contribution to BBC Worldwide – and subsequently back to the BBC – was fundamental to maintaining that confidence. People keep saying digital is a revenue stream of the future – I believe it’s the revenue stream of now,” he said.

One of the ways in which it managed to drive reach was to diversify its revenues and third-party platforms on which it could sell its content internationally, along with launching download-to-own content on iTunes.

With the likes of Hulu, Netflix and Amazon all on the hunt for premium content deals, fresh opportunities opened up for new partnerships, commercially beneficial for both sides. All deals have led to double-digit percentage revenue growth, according to Heaf.

“We have led the way with partners like Netflix and made our content available where others have held back.

"We have always been early with partners, we were the first broadcaster to do a commercial deal with YouTube, we were early with Netflix in the US. We have always been keen to grow our content availability and awareness and have worked on these partnership to make it happen.”

Previously Heaf has spoken about He stressed the importance of media companies and tech companies forming partnerships to cross-fertilize knowledge, skills and resources.

“There are two sides to the coin – for platforms like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu to be unique they need to understand how to commission and produce original content. The flip side is companies like Netflix and Amazon have done amazing things with technology on a global scale that media companies need to learn. So there are skills and capabilities that both sides have that are required that’s why partnerships are so valuable.”

These partnerships, along with its expansion into multiple content verticals over the last year, have been intrinsic to maintaining the growth BBCW has seen around three core pillars - reach, revenue and innovation, according to Heaf.

It has launched other editorial projects such as its automative-focused vertical Autos, and has others in the pipeline, all of which have proved important parts of the continued growth of BBC.com, which now account for 10 per cent of its average 79m monthly unique users.

It has also run extensive trials of native advertising formats in the US predominantly, with no plans to introduce advertising to the UK domains, according to Heaf.

Meanwhile it will also continue to drive its start-up incubator scheme BBC Labs, first launched in 2012, which has seen it partner with a range of UK digital start-ups to help develop them with the view to potentially working with them on a commercial basis.

This has resulted in it rolling out technology developed by some of these companies across parts of its portfolio of brands. Technology developed by BBC Lab partner Foodity introduced the ability to let readers looking at recipes and food-related content to add items straight to their shopping basket directly from the content.

Heaf will not be directly replaced at BBC Worldwide, with his responsibilities to be spread out amongst the rest of the team. His digital and social marketing, along with YouTube responsibilities will be now come under the chief brand officer, while the consumer technology teams who build Store and BBC.com - the latter of which had a record 96m unique users in March - will report to the operations director in charge of strategic IT. Meanwhile the editorial team writing the verticals will report to the head of content.

The time in which digital roles are "hived" off are receding, albeit at a different pace for certain companies, according to Heaf, who described the role of chief digital officer as a "transitory" position. "That role is there to set the pace, the agenda, drive the strategy and what is possible, while driving results. It should be a part of every media executive's role now," he added.

Of all the opportunities currently available to media companies and brands he singled out YouTube as the one to watch. "I don't mean this in a threatening way - the opportunity for content creators on YouTube globally is unparalleled, and with that comes creative opportunities for marketers and brands.

"In the future every ad will be chosen to be watched - just look at Volvo Jean Cluade Van Damme ads and Nike's ads - neither of which have necessarily lived on TV but people have chosen to watch them. It has a profound impact on what an ad is, and how it can be measured," said Heaf.