ARN has announced internal promotions and appointments as part of a restructure that will aim to revolutionise how the business creates relationships and commercial connections between brands, content and audiences.
This growth investment focuses on building ARN’s capabilities to scale quickly in the areas of data utilisation, content creation, and monetisation.
ARN have internally promoted Lauren Joyce to the newly created role of chief strategy and connections officer to try and amplify ARN’s commercial and content offering through the creation of mutually beneficial relationships between brands and audiences. This new role will also see Joyce join ARN’s Executive Leadership Team.
Joyce said: “Changes to the market brought about by COVID-19 have given us the opportunity to make our business even more customer focused. As part of this, we have created a team with a remit to go beyond selling our brands and instead, build and nurture enduring connections with our consumer and trade audiences and clients. This approach will deliver a more sustainable platform for both audience and commercial growth as we continue to diversify the ways people connect with our brands. We know our audience’s audio needs are constantly changing, so it will be a key focus for the team to ensure our brands and platforms can adapt to provide enhanced consumer experiences in a timely manner.”
Joyce will lead the newly created Connections Team, which includes the existing trade marketing and consumer marketing teams along with the research and insights team, to enable a strategic outlook that equally benefits the content and commercial functions of ARN.
Lauren joined ARN in 2019 as National Strategy Director where she led the client strategy team. During this time, Lauren led the development of the trade facing proposition Defining Audio, was integral to the successful launch of the iHeartPodcast Network Australia.
ARN’s CEO Ciaran Davis said, “As Australia’s #1 Network, radio is our core business, complemented by our digital audio offering. ARN already deliver exceptionally creative client campaigns and integrations that engage audiences nationally across our on-air, digital and on-demand audio offering, however this new approach will see ARN working with our commercial clients in more collaborative ways with embedded business partnerships that place audiences and customers at the centre of everything. This is an investment in our future growth as we build skills and capabilities within the business in key areas of data and commercialised content creation.
“Lauren has a proven dynamic approach to commercial content and brand-led activity, making her the best person to lead the newly formed Connections Team as part of ARN’s customer-focused evolution strategy. Her appointment to this newly created role is part of ARN’s unwavering commitment to invest in the best expertise across the business as we continue to innovate and evolve as a leading Australian media company.”
To further support this positioning and evolution of the business, ARN also announces internal commercial promotions across the business in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
In Brisbane, Brian Tanner has been promoted to Commercial Director and Emily Buckby promoted to the role of Agency Sales Director.
In Sydney, Denis Donati has taken on the newly created role of Digital Group Sales Manager.
In Melbourne, Sian Reid has been promoted to Group Sales Manager.
Davis continued, “ARN has always had a strong commercial strategy backed by exceptional teams. These internal promotions recognise the outstanding performance of these individuals and are part of ARN’s continued investment in our people and the business to maintain our market-leading position and commercial offering for clients.”