EXCLUSIVE: Banijay Rights has hired Passion Distribution’s Claire Douglas as part of a rejig of its marketing and comms team that sees Andrew Dickens taking over the division.
Douglas, who had led UK distributor Passion’s PR and marketing efforts for nearly nearly a decade, joins Banijay Entertainment‘s sales division as Communications Manager. She exited Passion earlier this month and previously worked at A+E Networks UK, Warner Bros and Disney.
She’ll work closely with Dickens, who has been promoted from VP to SVP of Communications and Marketing to lead the marcomms unit. Dickens has been with Banijay’s sales division for three years, having previously been a TV industry trade journalist and communications officer for government.
His promotion comes after Banijay Rights‘ long-serving marketing boss Steve Quirke exited at the end of March. However, we understand Dickens’ promotion isn’t a like-for-like replacement.
Elsewhere, Emily Hopkins will remain as VP of Marketing, Archie Grossart has been upped to Trade Market & Festival Manager and MJ Vuillermet has been promoted to Marketing Executive.
Banijay Rights has arguably the biggest catalog in the indie TV world, at about 185,000 hours. Shows include Big Brother, Survivor, Deal or No Deal, MasterChef, Peaky Blinders, Domina, Rogue Heroes and The Sixth Commandment, which bagged the Limited Series gong at the BAFTA TV Awards earlier this month.
The news comes soon after Deadline revealed Banijay’s parent company, FL Entertainment, was rebranding as Banijay Group. The production group, previously just Banijay, became Banijay Entertainment. It now sits next to events biz Banijay Live and online sports betting and gaming activities operation Banijay Gaming.