News UK promotes Chris Duncan to chief customer officer amid commercial restructure
News UK has made changes to its commercial leadership team, handing former chief marketing officer (CMO) Chris Duncan a new role of chief customer officer who will create a new ‘customer’ team. It follows the promotion of Dominic Carter, who was appointed chief commercial officer, replacing Paul Hayes who left last year.
The move comes as News Corp announced its results, with its newspapers delivering disappointing results and the business announcing that cost-cutting measures are to be put in place. The company, particularly its UK business, is also seeing huge change after the acquisition of Unruly last year and the removal of The Sun’s paywall.
Of the changes to the leadership team, a spokesperson said: "Dominic Carter has been appointed the company’s chief commercial officer. His team’s remit has widened to create powerful partnerships with clients, providing a variety of innovative solutions including print, digital, video and tailored client events. Adding in the expertise of colleagues at Unruly it will makes a competitive commercial package for our customers.”
According to a spokesperson, Duncan’s new role will be focused on understanding and growing audiences via a new ‘customer’ team, as well as working alongside Carter’s team to monetise the audience.
“With the importance placed on identifying, acquiring and then serving our audiences, we are creating a new customer team and Chris Duncan (current chief marketing officer) has been appointed chief customer officer. This team will work closely alongside the commercial department, and will be focused on knowing our audience inside out, acquiring new audiences and retaining them. Key audience data will now be harnessed in one place, informing both our own business and those of our clients on how best to execute and analyse ad campaigns,” said the spokesperson.
The Drum understands that further changes are being made to the commercial team to reflect the reshuffle, including some redundancies. The Drum has approached News UK for comment but but was unable to respond before the time of publication.