Virgin Media O2 UK makes structural changes to its leadership
Broadband, TV and mobile giant VMO2 (Virgin Media and O2) appears to have followed the creation of a new Consumer unit by making some structural changes to their leadership, which has seen several senior figures depart as part of efforts to reorganise the team to ensure there is “greater prioritisation, simplification, alignment and focus” on the areas that will have the biggest impact.
According to reports on MarketingWeek and DecisionMarketing, the aforementioned reorganisation has now resulted in the departure of both VMO2’s Executive Director of Brand & Marketing, Rachel Swift, and the Head of Advertising Sales & Operations, Gareth Vaughan Jones. Lyssa McGowan, who leads the Consumer unit as CEO, will now oversee marketing across the business as part of her role.
“After nearly 11 years at Virgin Media, my role has been impacted by a restructure and I have been made redundant. It’s a big change, but I’m incredibly proud of what we built and achieved during my time leading the Advertising Sales & Operations team,” said Gareth Vaughan Jones via LinkedIn.
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On top of this the company’s Chief Operations Officer (COO), Rob Orr, and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Christian Hindennach, are also departing.
A VMO2 spokesperson said:
“Throughout her time at Virgin Media O2, Rachel has led brand and advertising with heart and ingenuity, delivering stand out campaigns and helping to shape the Virgin Media and O2 brands for their next chapter. We thank her for her contribution and leadership, and wish her every success for the future.”
The developments also come shortly after it was reported that VMO2’s owners, Telefónica and Liberty Global, were preparing a significant round of cost-cutting (i.e. a mix of job cuts and reducing capital expenditure) that could reflect a hit of up to c.£600m. Credits to Dave for spotting today’s news.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Well at least they are starting to cut jobs at the top rather than all the hardworking staff that make the c suite look good.
They’ve still be laying people off in the call centres in the UK, me and about 30 others got made redundant not long ago
This will do noting to change the awful indian based “customer services” abomination. The horse bolted years ago.
Lyssa will not oversee marketing, new marketing directors are being hired. Rachel resigned and Gareth was made redundant
Next it’s redundancy for the outbound and tier 2 retentions teams in Glasgow maxim park and Newcastle, these jobs will be moved to offshore, and some moved to Stockton on tees, Swansea , Sheffield
Once it dawns on the grown ups how much money is being burned in the Netomnia scam, I expect a few more to be spending more time with their pension.
Virtually none of that came from the parents of VMO2 and it was on use it or lose it and/or use it or be basically fined for not using it terms.
Opinions are like…
It’s a real shame that a company and brand can be so damaged in the UK. There is a real need to overhaul that business, and I’m sad to say I don’t think any of the work that’s happened over the past 10yrs will be enough.
An honest conversation between the ELT, board and investors is needed before the current game of cost cutting, acquisition and debt movement eventually falls apart. There are only so many alt nets they can buy to move numbers around.
Rob Orr will be a real loss, the impact he had in VM Business was enormous as was his consumer leadership during the Covid years.
Cost modelling in one of the mobile operators, proved that as soon as you looked at a shovel, let alone start digging, it was infinitely cheaper to get a line from Openreach to a cell site, rather than build your own backhaul.
So, if someone could please enlighten me here: Why spend billions to either buy an “alt net”, or deploy your own fibre, and then have to indefinitely battle with debt, instead of renting lines FTTH/PON lines from Openreach? Rent a line from Openreach, the customer pays their monthly bill, you pay the rent to Openreach, job done?
Is this ideology? For example, wanting to fight BT etc? What am I missing?
Let alone the other topic. I genuinely believe that many, if not all, of those “alt nets” had it pre-built in their business model right from day one to be taken over by one of the big guys. Take free government funding, deploy some fibre in some fringe area, proudly announce that you cover “X’ thousands of properties” and some time later put yourself up for sale.
They have control and can update the tech and not have to rely on another company to decide to update. If virgin or any other network provider wanted to say provide speeds of 8Gb/s then they can and not have to wait for Openreach to do it, If there is a issue with the network they can get if fixed, not have to wait for Openreach.
VM is way to big for what it needs to be, I shouldn’t have to complain to one special department so they can find that one person in another department who can fix the issue I’m having, it’s got so many departments it’s unreal, if they cut more UK call center staff after announcing not too long ago they were hiring more? That’s just bad imo, the Scottish retentions has been keeping people at VM for years with good offers, so many people are going to leave, tbh as soon as I can I’m switching to GG / anything else on nexfibre.