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JP hires former BBC marketing chief in new role

Terry McGrath_5077[1]A former head of marketing for BBC Online is joining regional publisher Johnston Press in a newly-created senior role.

Terry McGrath, pictured left, started work today as JP’s senior director of brand and product marketing, reporting to chief marketing officer Lucy Sinclair.

Said Lucy: “Terry has an impeccable track record of impressive and pioneering digital initiatives and a notable ability to lead.

“I know she will be an excellent asset to our team and am excited to see how our extensive portfolio of brands develops in her highly capable hands.”

Terry will be responsible for managing JP’s portfolio of brands including new proposition and product development, brand management and ongoing marketing.

She said: “I’m excited to be joining the talented team at Johnston Press at such a pivotal time for local news. The opportunity to draw on my digital expertise to even further strengthen Johnston Press’ offering is a huge privilege and I am looking forward to getting started.”

26 comments

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  • October 21, 2014 at 5:02 pm
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    You couldn’t make it up really.
    As the foot soldiers are pushed out the door, the officers’ club gets ever bigger.
    It ‘s just what JP need at the minute : a ” senior” no less “director of brand and product marketing” reporting of course to the “chief marketing officer”.
    Layer upon layer of management nonsense.

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  • October 21, 2014 at 6:36 pm
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    “Terry has an impeccable track record of impressive and pioneering digital initiatives and a notable ability to lead.

    “I know she will be an excellent asset to our team and am excited to see how our extensive portfolio of brands develops in her highly capable hands.”

    What is Lucy going to do all day then ?

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  • October 21, 2014 at 6:45 pm
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    Yet more money being ploughed into the digital dream. 5 staffers probably lost their job to pay the wage of this person.

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  • October 21, 2014 at 6:54 pm
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    In agreement with Reality check. Seems a knowledge of the BBC, rather than the newspaper industry, gets you into said ‘officers’ club’. Sick of reading about newly-created roles. (By the way, when is the newly-created role of Chief Creative Officer being filled?) Perhaps if JP spent as much budget on retaining more lower paid, talented staff to produce their products, the YP cricket mag would look a little more sporty and less like an order-of-service from a funeral service!

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  • October 21, 2014 at 7:06 pm
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    This is a clever appointment. Some of JP’s biggest and best resourced titles have lost their way and having a brand expert in the business will help them reestablish their position in their local markets. Whether the trolls like it not, 200 journalists on every title was not stopping the rot so we should applaud JP for trying something different. Definition of insanity and all that!

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  • October 21, 2014 at 7:37 pm
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    Well, I was going to comment, having read the story… but when I saw Reality Check’s post, decided I couldn’t do any better.
    If JP had been around in the days of The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, they’d have been excellent fairytale fodder.

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  • October 21, 2014 at 9:38 pm
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    Such a pivotal time for local news, so let’s bring in another marketing executive. Another smart move by the leadership.

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  • October 21, 2014 at 10:00 pm
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    I’d say as far as journalism branding goes JP is Lidl, but that is unfair to Lidl. Usual JP sensivity to shop floor. Too many chiefs and all that…

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  • October 22, 2014 at 12:49 am
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    So this new well-salaried recruit is going to help reverse the plummeting sales of JPs’ news print titles? Or just overlook the minimal profit they recoup from the shoddy online advertising banners, overlays and MPUs?

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  • October 22, 2014 at 7:38 am
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    So staff photographers are being sacrificed to pay for this six-figure invention we don’t need! The lunatics are running the asylum.

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  • October 22, 2014 at 7:51 am
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    The lunatics have now been given the keys to the asylum.
    A former head of marketing at the BBC, that’s the same BBC that is tax payer funded and already a global brand. Good luck applying previous experience to a disparate collection of independent brands, with their own unique resonance in each market they serve. The only thing they have in common is they are all unfortunate enough to be owned by JP.
    Sounds like an appointment to assist the share price, not the business.

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  • October 22, 2014 at 12:40 pm
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    hackwatcher…
    Not even Poundland. Maybe 99p Stories? Or church jumble sale?
    PS: What planet is Long John Silver on? Surely he/she can’t be a journalist!

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  • October 22, 2014 at 1:42 pm
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    Long John Silver lives on a different planet. Even JP’s biggest titles have never had 200 journalists. Neither do they need a brand expert to help them find a way to restablish themselves in their local markets. What they need is good quality news, court reports, and proper coverage of issues that matter locally, covered by reporters who have the time to go out to meet people and pick up more stories as they do so. Give editors the money to keep quality staff and they can do the rest. I’ll be interested to see how this unfolds because the implication is if Ms McGrath is a senior director of brand then presumably she will have a whole team of people working for her.

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  • October 22, 2014 at 8:59 pm
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    ‘Journo turned reader’ should get in touch with Ms McGrath as he/she clearly has the silver bullet to rescue the whole industry. Strange therefore what he/she is commenting on here under an alias rather than in person and in doing so, probably restricting their ability to earn a small fortune.

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  • October 23, 2014 at 9:13 am
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    ‘After talking to some friends over supper and asking them to try and imagine what getting their local newsfeed in a paper-based form might be like – I can see a new JP logo that is bold and solid yet inquisitive and somehow – dangerous?

    I can see warm colours on news boxes – speaking to our readers of musky rose, the moments before the start of an opera and the hint of a Tuscan farmhouse.

    I can see company wide mastheads on the lines of ‘Your JP Local Newspaper/Website’, evoking a spirit that the ‘old town’ is dead and shaking off the shackles of past identities while informing the reader-client of an exciting inclusive future of multi-level media delivery that makes kittens, giant crabs and selfies as relevant as coal mines, weaving, councils and hospitals once were.’

    You’ve got the job!

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  • October 23, 2014 at 10:20 am
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    Another fat salary at the top yet some areas of JP are consulting over closing receptions. How’s that for brilliant marketing to the public Ms McGrath?

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  • October 23, 2014 at 12:44 pm
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    Think Long John Silver has thrown his dummy out of his pram because he realises his claim of 200 journalists working on every JP title was laughable.

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  • October 23, 2014 at 4:14 pm
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    Loving the Twenty Twelve / W1A vibe from Confused. As Reality Check said at the beginning of this thread:
    You. Really. Could. Not. Make. It. Up.

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  • October 23, 2014 at 8:53 pm
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    Journo turned reader, I gave you a platform to fire your silver bullet and you retreat to query the ‘200’ reference. If I adjust my position to ’25’ in order to provoke you to save our industry, will you? Come on, stand up and be counted, this is your chance to go down in history and save the profession we all love……?

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  • October 23, 2014 at 10:59 pm
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    LJS – All opinions are valid: please lose the sarcasm and provocation. Personally, I don’t think that some of the largest JP titles have lost their way – they have simply lost the staff that they once had to be able to produce the quality of product they previously did. Now, in my area, it relies on nostalgia photos, nominations from readers for various awards, photos of school starters etc. to fill pages. All this is fine, within a packed paper, but more and more, such features are being promoted in-paper: as if they will generate sales. There are fewer news stories – just news in brief. I tend to agree with JTR – at least if the paper contains more local and national news, local sport reporting (not just lifts from websites) and pleasing, creative designs to please advertisers, it will have a print readership for longer than JP clearly wants it to have. Nobody is going to save the print product as it is today, but print is by no means dead and could have years in it yet. Until JP can generate income from digital, it should not be so obsessed with hiring digital people at huge cost.

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  • October 24, 2014 at 11:48 am
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    Welcome to a woman at the top.
    Let’s see if she can freshen up the fat-pocketed boys’ club.
    Timing is awful with her appointment, as cuts are seeing staff with decades of experience booted out the door, but I’ll give her a chance.
    Perhaps she can start by looking at the dire ipad app which is miles behind the quality of any of the nationals.

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  • October 24, 2014 at 1:00 pm
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    Yet another of Mr Highfield’s old BBC chums who shares his digital vision and knows sod all about the newspaper industry! I could go on but to be honest, words fail me on this occasion. Nuff said.

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  • October 29, 2014 at 12:41 pm
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    back to marketing basics. weekly paper billboard near my home, three weeks out of date. Excellent way to sell paper to public! Attn Ms McGrath.

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  • November 3, 2014 at 10:43 am
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    Looking at a 1935 edition of my old and once highly respected weekly paper in library I was astounded at the high story count and the quality compared with the emaciated offering that pretends to be a paper now.

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  • November 3, 2014 at 7:59 pm
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    Cost cut victim, it’s neither sarcasm or provocation – moreover ‘stimulation’ and a desire to hear of possible alternatives to the dismissal that runs to the very core of almost every comment, on any story on HTFP, that represents a departure from the status quo. After all, if the value of every one of my fellow journalists was known and understood at a corporate plc level (we can’t escape the fact we don’t work for charities), we would have been protected from the cuts that often get referenced and this appointment might not have been needed as a an aforementioned opposite to the status quo.

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  • November 4, 2014 at 2:27 pm
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    Long John Silver….. your convoluted final post shows why the profession still needs sub-editors. I rest my case.

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