Gamesys has appointed Simon Jackson to the newly-created role of director of brand, acquisition and insights following the recent departures of two of its heavyweight marketing staff. Jackson, who has held senior marketing positions at the likes of Sky and Avis and started at the London-based firm this week, fills the void left by the exits of head of global acquisition marketing Robert Derow and global brand director Paul Troy.
Gamesys said the newly-created role combines the responsibilities of Troy and Derow, with Jackson overseeing all of its brand and player acquisition activity and the budget for both above-the-line and digital media activities.
“We think that in a world where media campaigns, spend and analytics need to be tightly coupled, it made more sense to have all this responsibility under one director and one team,” Lee Fenton, Gamesys CEO, told eGaming Review.
Troy, who was director of strategy at Telephonica UK and director of marketing at MoneySupermarket, has now joined Confused.com as its CMO. He joined Gamesys with the remit of overseeing its entire range of brands, including Jackpotjoy, Heart Bingo, CaesarsCasino.com and Virgin Games. However leading brands Jackpotjoy, Botemania and Starspins have now been sold to Intertain, while Gamesys also recently lost one of its largest B2B clients, Sun Bingo, to Playtech.
Derow has moved back to his native California where he is now growth director at BCG Digital Ventures.
Jackson’s appointment comes after Gamesys bolstered its senior management team with a number of new hires, including former Hills director of gaming innovation James Curwen. And CEO Fenton said the new talent would be vital in executing the company’s “ambitious plans”.
“At all levels, we aim to recruit the best in the industry. Our people and talent strategy are as important to us as our strategic roadmaps for new products and new games,” he said. Fenton also played down the loss of the Sun Bingo account and said it did not reflect a change in strategy.
“We’ve always operated in both the B2C and B2B arenas, and that is still very much our strategy,” Fenton said.
“We don’t see ourselves as a ‘vanilla’ platform provider, so we don’t assess our success on how many partners we have. We’ll continue to work with a few select and likeminded partners where both parties can see fabulous mutual return.
“For these partners, we understand where we can add the most value, and will deliver end to end propositions brilliantly and we believe, better than anyone else,” he added.
