EE's chief marketer departs as BT merges marketing roles
EE's managing director of marketing, Max Taylor, will be leaving the company as the BT Consumer and EE chief marketing roles are merged into one.
BT Moments ad, released May 2018
Under a new "simplified" structure there will now be a single marketing lead for the two telecoms brands under the title managing director of marketing for consumer. That role will be filled by Pete Oliver who previously filled the BT post.
Taylor is understood to have left for a role at another company which has yet to be announced.
Two more new executive roles have been created as part of the corporate restructure. Ettienne Brandt of EE takes up the managing director commercial mantle and Ash Roots, who recently joined from Dixons Carphone, will be managing director of digital. BT stated that its leadership team remains unchanged after the marketing shuffle.
The changes were announced by Marc Allera, chief executive of BT's Consumer business, who has integrated BT with EE to align their marketing strategies and cross-promote products across each brand.
In 2015, BT snapped up mobile carrier EE for £12.5bn. Since then, it has been trying to fast-track EE's integration into the wider group. As a result, earlier this year BT shed some 13,000 of its 80,000 strong UK workforce. Now Allera has said the companies are pursuing a "convergence" of services.
He is charged with ensuring each brand speaks with its own voice. However the marketing will promote quad-play packages across mobile, broadband, landline and TV.
Allera said: “We’re working hard every day to give our customers the widest choice of converged products and services, on the best networks, with the best service.
"This new management structure will ensure that we’re able to be more agile and effective as we create the best-connected experiences and provide the best service for our customers right across the UK.”
The group's recent marketing campaign reflects this. Its work highlights the seamless transition customers can have if they pair BT and EE home and mobile connections respectively. When launching this campaign, The Drum was invited to separately interview both EE’s Taylor and BT’s Oliver. Each MD had something a little different to say about the future of the group. Now Oliver will have a larger say in how BT consumer goes forward.
As Oliver put it in May: "BT customers are a little bit older, they want high quality and reliability, but don't need the latest thing; EE are more tech-savvy and want the latest iPhone, and Plusnet's role is to attract value customers, without the bells and whistles."
