Netflix has hired Ikea’s global marketing leader James Foster as its new vice president of EMEA marketing.
Foster will move to the streaming platform after less than a year at Ikea owner Ingka Group, where he was head of global marketing and chief marketing officer for Ikea Retail since March 2022.
Prior to Ikea, he was vice-president of Reebok Europe for about a year and spent 13 years at Adidas in various global roles across marketing and general management. Earlier in his career, Foster—who is originally from the U.K.—worked in home entertainment at Sony and Universal Pictures.
At Netflix, Foster will lead the EMEA marketing team based out of Amsterdam.
He replaces Danielle Crook-Davies, who left the streaming service in September to return to the U.S.
Netflix’s rebound
The hire comes at a pivotal time for Netflix after it launched an ad-supported tier in November. So far, the Basic with Ads option is available in a dozen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain and the U.K. Anheuser-Busch InBev was the first advertiser to run a commercial on the ad-supported tier.
After losing nearly a million subscribers in the second quarter of 2022, Netflix rebounded in the third quarter by growing its subscriber base—much of which came from outside the U.S. and Canada. It added 2.4 million subscribers in Q3 2022—reaching 223.09 million in total—with growth primarily from the APAC (1.3 million) and EMEA (600,000) regions.
Beside the addition of advertising to the platform, another upcoming change set to roll out in early 2023 will be a “paid sharing” option which will give borrowers the ability to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account. For users that share accounts, an “extra member” sub-account profile is also on the way, which will allow account owners to pay for family and friends.
Source link
