Guardian News & Media today announces two new marketing roles to further drive global engagement and reach. Charlotte Putnam has joined the organisation as of Monday 8 December as director of audience and insight, and Sonia Sudhakar will start in January as director of digital growth.
Charlotte will lead the Guardian’s twenty-strong audience insight team, focusing on research and insight to understand the changing needs of readers across print, digital and social platforms. She will work closely with the Guardian’s data science team to create audience understanding for editorial and commercial stakeholders and inform key decisions and thought leadership.
She joins from John Brown Media, where she was Head of Strategy and Insight, UK and International, responsible for strategic direction and research projects for clients across different sectors including finance, government, entertainment and media. Prior to this she headed up the insight team at Omnicom Media Group, where she created the first MGOMD insight department and represented the UK as part of the OMD global research community.
In her role as director of growth, Sonia Sudhakar will be responsible for marketing and audience growth across all digital platforms, with a particular focus on social, video, mobile and email. Leading a team of thirteen, she will build on the Guardian’s well-known excellence and innovation in the marketing space to create highly participative digital brand experiences.
Sonia joins from ITV, where she held the position of Director of Digital and On Demand Marketing, leading the ITV Player brand and Digital Marketing for the wider business. Prior to this she held senior marketing roles at Virgin Media, Telegraph Media Group and lastminute.com. In recent years Sonia has been particularly interested in converting social media engagement into profit, which will remain a key focus for her in her new role at the Guardian.
Both roles will report to marketing director Tim Hunt, who said:
“I’m so excited to welcome Charlotte and Sonia to the team. The Guardian is one of the world’s leading quality online news-brands, with an increasingly global audience, so their expertise in customer data and insight will be a huge asset to us going forward.
“Working closely with our brilliant brand marketing team, ably led by Richard Furness, Charlotte and Sonia will bring the experience, talent and vision to engage and grow our audiences faster, on a global scale.”
Incoming director of audience and insight, Charlotte Putnam, commented:
“I’m thrilled to be joining the Guardian’s award-winning Insight team at such an exciting time. The Guardian’s pioneering ‘open journalism’ approach attracts a growing, highly progressive digital audience, and I look forward to finding out more about them in this ever-changing global media landscape”
Incoming director of digital growth, Sonia Sudhakar, commented:
“The Guardian has a well-earned reputation for innovation in the digital space, and I’m excited to be joining such a talented team and helping to drive forward the next phase of digital growth.”
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Notes to editors
About Guardian News & Media
Guardian News & Media (GNM) publishes theguardian.com, the one of the leading English-speaking quality digital newspapers in the world. Since launching its US and Australia digital editions in 2011 and 2013 respectively, traffic from outside of the UK now represents over two-thirds of the Guardian’s total digital audience.
In the UK, GNM publishes the Guardian newspaper six days a week, first published in 1821, and the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer.
The Guardian is most recently renowned for its Pulitzer Prize and Emmy-winning revelations based on the disclosures made by whistleblower Edward Snowden. In 2014, the Guardian was named newspaper and website of the year at the Society of Editors UK Press Awards and is the most trusted news source in the UK (Ofcom digital media report, 2014).
The Guardian is also known for its globally acclaimed investigation into phone hacking, the launch of its groundbreaking digital-first strategy in 2011 and its trailblazing partnership with WikiLeaks in 2010.
