Last week, the marketing department unveiled a £1m Christmas promotion - 3m copies of a glossy magazine to promote the alternative nature of this year's Christmas schedule.
This week it announced a radical channel rebranding, with bold, high-tech idents designed to have maximum impact in the crowded multi-channel market. And it is now plotting a major multimedia campaign to promote its latest US import, Desperate Housewives, billed as 'Sex in suburbia'.
Not surprisingly, Cochrane is feeling rather worn down. Through coughing and sneezing fits, she struggles to articulate the marketing challenges ahead. Chief among them, she croaks, is to maintain Channel 4's distinct identity in an increasingly competitive TV landscape. Its days as the default channel for intelligent, affluent urbanites are long gone: they are the first to pay for a wider choice of programmes through cable and satellite.
Part of Cochrane's task is countering a perception that Channel 4 has sacrificed its reputation for challenging programming on the altar of ratings-busting populist shows such as Big Brother and Wife Swap.
'No one at Channel 4 believes our remit has changed,' she insists. 'Yes, Big Brother has been a huge commercial success, but we took a big risk with it and no other broadcaster would have been so innovative, or taken such a risk. However, we need to remind people that Big Brother is not all we are about, and that is mainly a corporate marketing job.'
By corporate she means politicians, Ofcom and other TV bodies, 5000 of whom are being sent a glossy tome entitled '2004: The Channel 4 Year', highlighting the pride of this year's schedule, from The Hamburg Cell to Death in Gaza.
When it comes to consumer marketing, Cochrane does not believe she has any such perception problem. The task is to simply spend the money where it will get the biggest commercial return. However, next year's Big Brother will not get any promotion, she reveals, largely because the tabloid media frenzy surrounding the show now does the job for her. Aside from Desperate Housewives, the bulk of the £10m budget will be spent on popular programmes such as Shameless and The Simpsons.
Cochrane does not see any contradiction between the aforementioned strategy and the decision to invest a £1m chunk of the budget in promoting a Christmas schedule full of worthy programmes, but with minority appeal. She denies this is linked to the strategy of highlighting the channel's public-service programming, or the recent appeals for an extra £100m of public funding.
'In the past we have given up at Christmas, but we are confident that this year's schedule will be the best in Channel 4's history. The magazine is really a piece of brand marketing, rather than programme promotion,' she argues.
There is unlikely to be any let-up in 2005, with a campaign to develop for a revamped E4 at the end of January and the launch of the 30-something More4 channel in September.
Before that, on 16 December, she has a wedding to fit in, followed by a honeymoon in the Maldives. She is getting hitched to long-time partner Tom Sykes, the Film4 general manager, with whom she has two sons. Finding quality time to spend with the boys, aged four and 18 months, is very important for Cochrane. She leaves the office on the dot of six every night. 'I'll walk out of meetings if I have to,' she says. 'And I give over the weekends to them.' She also shares with her partner a passion for films.
But her immediate priority is to get fit for her big day. 'I'm mega-dosing on Zinc and Vitamin C, which I hope will do the trick. Otherwise I might be struggling to say my vows.'
CAREER HISTORY
1990-92: Account director, Cowan Kemsley Taylor
1992-93: UK communications manager, Vanity Fair
1993-96: Product manager, The Observer, rising to development manager
for The Guardian and The Observer
1996-98: Marketing manager rising to head of advertising promotions,
Five
1998-present: Controller of marketing rising to director of network
marketing, Channel 4
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