oOh! Taps Virgin Mobile CEO As Chief Customer Officer

oOh!Media has appointed former Virgin Mobile chief executive officer David Scribner as its chief customer officer, a new role to support the company’s strategy to deliver on its vision of being a new out of home media company.

Scribner, one of the few former chief marketing officers who was elevated to CEO, brings proven experience in developing and leading customer-centric organisations in B2B and B2C environments, which beyond Virgin Mobile also included Optus, Nestle and most recently True Local.

oOh! CEO Brendon Cook said the company recognised 18 months ago the need for a chief customer officer in order to lead revenue generation and support the business strategy that oOh! started developing in 2012 to evolve the traditional out of home company by 2020.

Cook said: “We have been busy pulling everything together: From introducing powerful new data sets, to enabling advertisers to better reach and target their audiences, to introducing content across our inventory, to growing our existing network of Classic and Digital inventory while creating new opportunities for consumers to engage with advertisers at the right scale.

“To support this, we identified that we needed to change the way we engaged with our various customers.

“Our advertisers, agency customers and our property partners had changing needs and at the same time government and consumers’ expectations of out of home as a public space medium were also changing rapidly.

“It was clear that we needed to further instill a customer-centric lens to our business and as such we undertook an extensive global search to find a Chief Customer Officer, a role that we kept evolving during the recruitment process.

“With the support of a selection committee also comprising of our chairman Tony Faure and board member Joanne Crewes – who has proven global brand marketing and business leadership expertise – David was a clear stand out from a field of high-quality candidates as the best person to help us continue to drive our transformation to a customer-centric organisation.”

“David brings intimate knowledge of the needs of advertisers, understands the media agency landscape and is experienced in bringing together senior teams across multidisciplinary customer touching areas.

“On top of this, he clearly gets out of home, has demonstrated the ability to create a customer-centric organisation that drives business growth and importantly, will be a great fit for our culture.

As chief customer officer, David’s role will be to help advertisers and property partners engage with audiences more deeply and to bring together key functional areas that directly support media buying clients including: sales, marketing, data and insights, content and creative services and client services.

Scribner, who during his leadership at Virgin Mobile oversaw the game-changing Fair Go Bro and Game of Phones campaigns which drove significant growth in customers and EBITDA for the challenger brand, said he was thrilled to be joining a media business he has had a long infinity with.

“Out of Home is a great medium to build brands and what’s more, it is more cost effective when compared to other channels,” Scribner, who is chairman of the Board of Ad Standards, said.

“And oOh! is the clear leader in the field, by continuing to evolve what the industry looks like to meet the needs and challenges of advertisers.”

“The passion and enthusiasm shown by the Board and executives is contagious and I believe this, and the elements that oOh! has in place, is a compelling offering for any advertiser.

“I look forward to working with the current team at oOh! and collaborating with Adshel’s new products and people, to shift the market being neutral about Out of Home to being powerful advocates.”

Cook said while the role had been in the making for some time and was not in reaction to the Adshel acquisition, David would be pivotal in bringing together the two businesses under a unified strategy and approach to market.

Scribner will commence with oOh! on 8 October 2018.

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