ThinkTV taps Reckitt Benckiser’s Rowena Newman for marketing boss job
Marketing and research body ThinkTV has appointed a new marketing boss, tapping Reckitt Benckiser’s Rowena Newman for the role.
Rowena Newman ends 10 years with Reckitt Benckiser to join ThinkTV
Think TV is a new initiative of free-to-air and pay-TV networks who have combined to create a marketing and research body for the TV industry,with Ten executive Russel Howcroft appointed in May as its first chair.
Newman joins the industry body after just over 10 years with Reckitt Benckiser which she first joined in February 2005 as marketing manager.
She was then made global marketing manager for Nuforen, joining the RB team in London in September 2006 and then moved to New York to take on the global marketing manager – Mucinex role in April 2008.
In September 2010 Newman headed back to Sydney to take on her current role as head of media ANZ.
Commenting on her new role, Newman said: “I’ve been at RB for 10 years and I’ve been in my current role for six years so I was certainly looking for a bit of a change and a new adventure.
“I am a big believer in TV and the ROI of TV and have been called a ‘TVangelist’ by people at work. When this job came up it really felt like a natural fit for me and something I felt very passionate about.”
On what the challenges and opportunities are for ThinkTV, Newman said the challenge lies within balancing the new world of digital with the traditional world.
“Having worked in marketing for 20 years I have seen, over more recent years, the job of a marketer and a CMO become much, much harder with the fragmentation of media, the more choices for the investment dollar, the complexity of the digital channels, all the new metrics they bring with them – things like viewability and clickthrough,” she said.
“For TV within that, how to marry the old metric in with the new world, things like cross-channel reach, for me that’s a massive challenge and opportunity and something I’m looking forward to getting involved with and getting my teeth into.
While remaining coy on what she wants to achieve in the role, Newman is keen to bring back the “sparkle” to TV.
“Personally I would like to restore some of the glamour and some of the sexy, shiny new innovation credentials to TV. With all the new media players in the media space, so much of the shiny-new-thing kudos has gone to those players and TV has lost some of its sparkle,” she said.
“I’m really hoping we can put in place a lot of initiatives that can bring some of that kudos back to TV.”
In June the body hired former Helloworld chief marketer Kim Portrate as its first CEO.
Newman replaces Rhonda Brown and joins ThinkTV on October 17.
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Great hire! Well done Ro…
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Congrats Ro – really exciting move for you.
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