JOB DESCRIPTION

Job Title: Head of Insight, Global and EMEA, BBC Global News Ltd
Reports to: Vice President Marketing and Insight, Global and EMEA BBC Global
News Ltd
Base: London Media Centre, White City (W12), and Brock (W1)
Grade: 01W
Organisational Context

Global News Limited (GNL), where this role sits is the commercial company responsible for
BBC.com/news and World News TV, and is tasked with achieving commercial success in order to
fund and improve its overall editorial output.

Overview:

As Head of Insight you will be responsible for bringing Global News Limited’s audiences to life within
the business. You will be the champion of audiences, ensuring that the business has the right
practical audience and competitor insight. This role sits across TV, mobile, digital and social channels
therefore experience in understanding audiences across these is critical.

Managing an insights team of 3 in the London office (Research Manager, Senior Research Executive
and Research Executive), you will lead them in delivering best in class audience insight for both
editorial and commercial parts of GNL. You will also work with the Research Directors in the New
York and Singapore offices, taking a shared lead on Global research projects.

You will create the audience insight strategy and plan, managing all the core insight tools and be
responsible for the relationships with external agencies and vendors. You will also manage the insight
budget.

This role’s core responsibility is developing insights across BBC’s commercial news business.
Engaging and working with senior stakeholders within the Advertising Sales team, you will be
responsible for creating commercial opportunities through new and existing research, presenting
compelling sales arguments that empower the sales team to drive commercial revenues. The role will
also include being responsible for your team’s response to advertising sales requests, and liaising
with colleagues within the wider commercial sales overseas teams.

You will also provide best in class audience insight, and will become the audience evangelist,
ensuring that the audience is at the heart of business discussions, decisions and output. You’ll
champion a variety of audience insight tools like our audience segmentation and brand tracker survey
and work collaboratively with other senior audience and insight leaders across the wider BBC
business. You’ll influence a variety of senior stakeholders from editorial, product, strategy and
comms. You’ll need first class negotiation and influencing skills to ensure audience insights are
represented across the output of all these teams.

You will also be responsible for devising and delivering best-in-class and commercially actionable
thought leadership research by identifying key industry topics/issues and using innovative
methodologies to build compelling research stories around them.

The role requires an analytical mind and someone who is genuinely passionate and curious about
how we understand GNL brand and services. The role will require deep dive information analysis,
and creative storytelling. The ideal candidate will be able to suggest innovative ways to address
research & strategic questions and use research to drive the development of our services as a whole.

Key Responsibilities:

 Insuring audiences are at the forefront of decision-making at a strategic level for both the editorial
and commercial parts of the business
 To bring to life audience and market information in a way that clients find powerful.
 To present, influence and negotiate with senior stakeholders to ensure audiences are reflected in
editorial, product and commercial output
 To be an industry expert on the role of news in the lives of audiences, and to use this expertise to
promote the work of GNL within the BBC and beyond
 To introduce creative research techniques which deliver rich and deep insights into our
audiences.
 To devise and deliver powerful and actionable thought leadership research that drives GNLs
profile in the industry and supports commercial objectives
 To create centre piece insight projects to shape the future of Global News Ltd, and building
findings into the work of strategy and editorial teams
 To use a range of techniques for analysing data and disseminating findings, ensuring that
presentations are understandable to the non specialist audience.
 To highlight the strategic and tactical consequences of the analyses undertaken and to present
these in ways that are understandable and engaging to non-specialist audiences, up to board
level.
 Commission and undertake strategic, operational and tactical qualitative and quantitative
research as appropriate and to be solely responsible for these projects from start to finish.
 Employ and agree 3rd party suppliers of audience data, brand tracking, and research
requirements. Ensure that briefs are clear. Supervise the agency to deliver a successful
outcome. Monitor progress and supervise the interpretation and delivery of results to the BBC.
 To be able to identify insights both for external commercial purposes and for internal strategic
direction.
 Oversee all EMEA Ad Sales requests from providing research for RFP’s, monitoring the
performance of all AFC projects, managing all client-focused studies and providing on-going
product support and training.
 Drive the commercial businesses by presenting compelling sales arguments to the sales teams,
agencies and clients.
 Provide evaluations of commercial and in-house campaigns, presenting in a compelling way
telling the story behind the data.
 To critically evaluate research findings and challenge perceptions and thinking on audience
attitudes and behaviour.
 Share expertise and insights learned with the entire GNL and across audiences teams within the
BBC (UK, WS, WW). Maintain links with other parts of the BBC in order to ensure synergy across
audience insight activities.
 Manage a team of researchers including KPIs, performance and training
 To contribute to the team in a positive and constructive manner and help build a great audiences
and business insights team.

Person Specification

Skills and Experience

 Substantial experience in a market analysis environment, including experience of international

market research and panel methodologies.
 Experience in digital essential – being able to lead and evolve digital audience research
techniques and a deep understanding of audience online behaviours.
 Demonstrable experience in successfully managing stakeholder relationships at a senior level,
especially with editorial, product and sales teams.
 Experience in senior leadership and proven track record in effective people management.
Demonstrable experience of having successfully led, motivated and developed a team of insights
professionals
 Ability to present audience analysis in a compelling way, and in a manner that engages editorial
stakeholders. Ability to interpret data and recommend action on a variety of analyses.
 Keen interest in the internet and other emerging media and for understanding global media
developments.
 A team player, able to play an active part in a management team that creates and implements a
shared vision for the future and works together collaboratively and effectively. Effective negotiator.
 Self-motivated and deadline-driven. Ability to manage multiple projects and changing priorities
effectively in a complex, fast-paced business environment with strict deadlines
 An appreciation of business processes and a strong understanding of marketing concepts and
strategies. Experience in both a commercial and public service research environment an
advantage.
 Excellent communication skills - both written and oral, comfortable presenting to large groups.

Competencies

Communication – The ability to get one’s message understood clearly by adopting a range of styles,
tools and techniques appropriate to the audience and the nature of the information.

Managing relationships – Able to build and maintain effective working relationships with a range of
people. Works co-operatively with others to be part of a team, as opposed to working separately or
competitively.
Creative Thinking – Is able to transform creative ideas/impulses into practical reality. Can look at
existing situations and problems in novel ways and come up with creative solutions.

Strategic Thinking – Can identify a vision along with the plans which need to be implemented to
meet the end goal. Evaluates situations, decisions, issues, etc. in the short, medium and longer-term.

Influencing and Persuading – Ability to present sound and well-reasoned arguments to convince
others. Can draw from a range of strategies to persuade people in a way that results in agreement or
behaviour change.

Flexibility – Adapts and works effectively with a variety of situations, individuals or groups. Is able to
understand and appreciate different and opposing perspectives on an issue, to adapt an approach as
the requirements of a situation change and to change or easily accept changes in one’s own
organisation or job requirements.

Living the BBC Values – sets high standards for the world’s most trusted broadcaster, demonstrates
a passionate commitment to the BBC’s brand values and keeps up to date with public opinion, admits
mistakes when we make them and takes appropriate action, takes responsibility for building trust in
the BBC, deals fairly with suppliers, contributors and members of the public