Guardian to overhaul Brand Partnerships business to meet advertiser demand for more bespoke digital campaigns
Guardian News & Media (GNM) is relaunching its Brand Partnerships business to meet increased advertiser demand for more bespoke branded content campaigns that drive further integration with the publisher’s global social and digital audiences.
The new business, called Guardian Labs, will kick off in the coming months, led by GNM’s brand partnerships group head Mia Barnes, who has been appointed client services director of the new initiative, and GNM head of business development Matt Gilbert who will become strategy director.
They will be responsible for structuring the new team and driving the proposition to market. The publisher is not yet revealing how a big a team it is planning to build, but it is on the lookout for a Guardian Labs director, who will report to GNM’s chief commercial officer David Pemsel.
The newspaper publisher has made the announcement internally and is positioning Guardian Labs as not just a rebranding of the current Brand Partnerships division but a “bolder” market proposition aimed at providing new and innovative ways for advertisers in the UK and globally to collaborate to create “compelling and bespoke” brand campaigns that can “activate its digital and social global audiences.
“Increasingly clients want to do more branded content and bespoke campaigns that engage and interact with audiences. Guardian Labs will be a bigger, bolder proposition that can create some exciting partnerships using a range of different media,” said a Guardian spokeswoman.
It will announce more in the coming weeks.