A strategic review of operations in October, Ministry of Sound has created a division called 'the brand group' encompassing all of its non-music services, such as media, travel and the eponymous nightclub. Creative director Mark Rodol will head the brand group as managing director.
Miskin left at the end of November. Rodol claimed that she had neither resigned nor been made redundant.
"She was here to do a specific job and she completed that project. She did a great job of refining our media exploits, but her role came to its natural end and she left," Rodol said.
Miskin, a former commercial director for IPC Media's digital brands and managing director of Excite UK, joined MoS in March (Marketing, February 28), saying her brief was to replicate in media the brand's success in the music industry.
However, in June MoS lost out to Saga Radio in the race for the East Midlands analogue radio licence, which it applied for under a new brand, Play 106.6. In November, the company decided to axe Ministry magazine, which launched in 1997, after failing to arrest a slide in sales. At its height it sold 120,000 copies a month, but in the last set of ABCs circulation fell 22% on the previous quarter to 65,030.
MoS has identified radio as the cornerstone of its future growth in media.
It already has a digital radio station and launched an analogue station in Dublin called Spin FM in April. In May it announced a £160m flotation in order to raise capital for its radio expansion, but in September it shelved the public offering until next year.
Rodol said the brand group has been established to "apply a lot more focus to our brand, which is our USP far and above everything else". He said the company would be announcing a new joint venture in January with an existing publisher to produce a new magazine that would be "closer to the core values of the Ministry brand".
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