Former GM of sales and marketing for AGL and NAB CMO joins ASX-listed telecoms player as part of a new operating structure
Sandra De Castro has left her role as GM of marketing and sales at AGL after just one year in favour of a new division business leadership position with Vocus Communications.
De Castro’s appointment as chief executive of consumer was announced yesterday as part of new divisional operating structure that sees the ASX-listed telecoms provider separating out the enterprise and government, and wholesale and international, consumer and New Zealand parts of its business.
De Castro has spent the past year at AGL, overseeing marketing, sales, consumer sales and loyalty teams. Upon joining the energy provider, she was tasked with helping it realise its digital transformation ambitions.
De Castro is best known for her work at NAB, where she spent four years as CMO and two years leading the banking group’s customer value proposition transformation. Prior to this, she spent years as a strategy consultant in the financial services space.
Alongside De Castro’s appointment, Vocus confirmed Michael Simmons, its current chief executive of enterprise and wholesale, will now lead the dedicated wholesale and international division. Current chief of consumer, Scott Carter, will move into the role of chief executive, enterprise and government.
Vocus group CEO, Geoff Horth, said the company’s acquisition of Nextgen had opened up new markets and presented significant growth opportunities across all business segments.
“The opportunities available in Vocus’ domestic wholesale business, combined with our investment in the Australia Singapore Cable, warrants the creation of a dedicated wholesale and international division and will ensure that we have the focus, products and service proposition to be the provider of choice to customers in this important market,” he said.
Horth singled our De Castro’s experience in leadership and customer-led digital transformation as key to her appointment.
“Sandra’s credentials and success in innovation and digital transformation brings invaluable experience to our executive team and will help drive the next phase of growth and customer centricity in our consumer division,” he said.
De Castro's departure from AGL followed a restructure of the customer markets business last year, an AGL spokesperson told CMO.
“The sales and marketing functions were split when the Customers Markets business was restructured last year to bring greater focus to value proposition development through personalisation and data, sales and distribution and digital, in an increasingly complex, competitive energy sector," the spokesperson said.
The decision saw Alison Wild appointed general manager of product and marketing, and Kellie Benda appointed general manager sales and go-to market.
“We are investing $300 million over three years in our Customer Experience Transformation (CXT) program to provide innovative products and services that give customers more control over their energy,” the spokesperson added.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+:google.com/+CmoAu
Our latest CMO 2022 readiness episode on the great resignation and staff motivation and leadership is now live!
Creating meaningful brands should be a holistic and considered process. However, all too frequently it’s one that is disparate and reactive, where one objective is prioritized at the expense of all others. So, what are the key pieces to the ‘good’ brand puzzle?
Companies encounter a variety of challenges when it comes to marketing overseas. Marketing departments often don’t know much about the business and cultural context of the international audiences they are trying to reach. Sometimes they are also unsure about what kind of marketing they should be doing.
Using data is a hot topic right now. Leaders are realising data can no longer just be the responsibility of dedicated analysts or staff with ‘data’ in their title or role description.
Anyone can become a victim of the sophisticated schemes set up by these scam websites. It's not about being smart; I don't consider mysel...
Mathieu Lecompte
ACCC takes Meta to court over scam cryptocurrency advertising
Nice blog!Blog is really informative , valuable.keep updating us with such amazing blogs.influencer agency in Melbourne
Rajat Kumar
Why flipping Status Quo Bias is the key to B2B marketing success
good this information are very helpful for millions of peoples customer loyalty Consultant is an important part of every business.
Tom Devid
Report: 4 ways to generate customer loyalty
Great post, thanks for sharing such a informative content.
CodeWare Limited
APAC software company brings on first VP of growth
This article highlights Gartner’s latest digital experience platforms report and how they are influencing content operations ecosystems. ...
vikram Roy
Gartner 2022 Digital Experience Platforms reveals leading vendor players