Clare Phillips appointed Channel 4 Head of Audience Research & Insight

Channel 4's Director of Audience Technologies and Insight, Gill Whitehead, today announces the appointment of Clare Phillips to the new role of Head of Audience Research and Insight.

Clare joins Channel 4 from Red Bee Media where she was a member of the creative management team and Head of Strategic Planning.  Whilst there, she led the strategic planning for the BBC and uktv and provided brand consultancy around the world for broadcasters such as Disney, Canal + and abc studios. Prior to this, she set up strategic planning and insight at BSkyB creative and held senior planning roles at leading advertising agencies AMV BBDO and JWT.

In the new role, Clare will lead a team providing research and insight to support Channel 4's programming, marketing and strategy teams.  She will work closely with Chief Creative Officer, Jay Hunt and the commissioning and scheduling teams to ensure both viewer insight and consumer trend data is part of the early stages of creative development; and, as part of the viewer engagement strategy, will harness emerging insight from Channel 4's viewer database.

Clare's audience research and insight team will also work closely with the marketing team to aid the development of strategic marketing initiatives and measure and evaluate the impact of campaigns.

Announcing the new appointment, Gill Whitehead said: "Clare has a fantastic track record in strategic planning and insight and I'm thrilled she is joining the team. She will be at the heart of our strategy to continue to understand more about our audience and to harness this insight to inform Channel 4's content commissioning and marketing and communications."

Clare Phillips said: "I'm delighted to be joining Channel 4 at a time of extraordinary creative renewal.  Channel 4 is an icon of British broadcasting and is living through its most exciting period since it launched.  The Audience Research and Insight team will help ensure that Channel 4 is the best informed broadcaster in the world.  Because the better Channel 4 knows their audience, the better the ideas and the better they can serve them with inspiring, provocative and entertaining content."

The appointment completes the senior Channel 4 Audience Technologies and Insight team line up alongside Head of Data Planning and Analytics, Sanjeevan Bala; Head of Viewer Relationship Management, Steve Forde; and Head of Advertising Research and Development, Sue Gray.  All four roles report to Gill Whitehead.