TORONTO – Corus Entertainment this week made a number of shifts in the structure of its marketing and communications units, bringing it all under one umbrella as the company pushes toward what it’s calling Corus 3.0.
However, the restructuring saw a number of people let go as well.
“As we look at how consumers continue to both discover and consume content across multiple platforms and the multitude of ways we now need to reach and engage our audiences, we have spent some time thinking about the optimal structure to best focus our efforts for the future,” said a staff memo sent Wednesday by Corus Entertainment EVP and COO Barbara Williams.
“With this in mind, we are more closely aligning all of our marketing and promotional functions together into one Marketing organization, ensuring a more tightly integrated, omni-channel focus to our marketing, promotions and audience engagement efforts, and creating a tighter linkage with our social and short-form content expertise.”
This meant several people lost their jobs in the shuffle this week including Jim Johnson, who was VP marketing, Global Entertainment and News and Corus Radio. Four other VPs were also let go however, at this time we do not know their names. Several others below VP were also terminated but the company has declined to say how many in total.
The new roles and structure at Corus include a primary new one for Dervla Kelly, who is now senior vice-president, marketing and social digital agency. She has the task of bringing marketing, creative agency, publicity, lifestyle digital, social and media planning functions into one team, reporting to Williams.
“Dervla brings a wide breadth and depth of expertise to this role from over 20 years in global marketing leadership roles, including branding, digital, advertising, PR, communications and social media. Most recently she founded so.da, our Social Digital Agency, an exciting new line of business for Corus,” reads Williams’ memo.
Reporting to Kelly will be
- Allison Carr, who will take on the position of head of specialty, trade and BDU marketing, overseeing marketing across these channels.
- Nadia Niccoli, director of marketing, Global Television.
- Brent Peterson, who will oversee the company’s in-house creative team as group director, creative agency.
- Andrea Parnell, senior director, media planning, will oversee in-house media planning agency which supports Corus as well as Shaw Communications and Freedom Mobile. She will continue to lead the Shaw and Freedom business, while Karen Gellar, who has been promoted to Director, Media Planning, will be the lead on Corus.
- Ashley Applebaum, director of publicity, will lead the company’s PR efforts across television, Nelvana, news and radio.
Corus will also be recruiting for a newly created role – director, social digital agency.
The Global, kids, and drama digital teams “will continue to report into Content as we focus our efforts in these verticals around apps and video platforms, managing content rights and windowing across platforms,” says the memo.
Kelly’s group will also have input into news marketing and radio promotions.
Cheryl Fullerton, who is EVP people and communications, will continue to oversee corporate communications and will be recruiting for someone new to lead external corporate communications.
Dale Dobson, creative director, on-air promotions and the graphics team, will now report to Glen Pollock, director, production and post services.
“This new structure will be more streamlined, allowing for greater spans of control and new growth opportunities within the marketing team. It will also enable us to drive greater efficiencies, synergies and flexible use of resources and creative talent,” wrote Williams.
“There is no doubt that we’re in a changing and dynamic industry. And on many days it can feel daunting to manage the pace and volume of change we’re experiencing. But at the same time, the greatest change always brings with it tremendous opportunities to grow, learn and challenge ourselves. The creativity, talent and passion of this combined marketing group is critical to Corus and forging our next chapter.”
