±±¾©Èü³µpk10

She's the boarding school-educated daughter of an Army officer father and a classical pianist mother. She herself is no musical slouch - a professionally trained chorister who used to sing in Canterbury Cathedral, and now amuses herself by composing film scores.

Not the sort of person, you might think, with an immediate affinity with The Sun's 'white van man' core reader. On first impressions, one imagines Kelvin MacKenzie would have eaten her for breakfast; and current editor, Rebekah Wade, is no shrinking violet.

But Furneaux-Harris is no lamb to the slaughter, says First Direct chief executive Alan Hughes, who was her boss at Midland Bank/HSBC in the late-90s. "Don't be fooled, Belinda is one of the most tenacious people I have ever met and will confidently stand up to anybody at The Sun," says Hughes.

"They will like her ability to get things done; she's incredibly focused."

Nor, it seems, is she a blue stocking: "She's cheeky, very saucy and has the filthiest laugh - so she's perfect for The Sun," says Tess Alps, deputy chairman of the PHD group, who worked with her at Midland Bank.

Furneaux-Harris, 38, doesn't start her role as marketing director of The Sun and the News of the World until September, but she has just returned from a breakfast presentation to Wade, News of the World editor Andy Coulson and her new bosses at News Group Newspapers.

This was no 'let's get acquainted' meeting. Furneaux-Harris believes in hitting the ground running and spent two hours presenting her ideas for a winter promotion campaign - she spent a couple of months working on them before she even knew she had got the job.

Her focus is evident when she begins this interview by unzipping a presentation case to show me examples of her past work, and then pulls out a tape recorder to record the interview herself. Perhaps the distrust of misquoting hacks stems from her first career, in public relations. It was something she fell into at Harrods when her initial career ambition, to be a fashion buyer, lost its appeal.

"I'd read Vogue since I was 13 and joined Harrods' graduate management programme. I did a stint in ladies' fashion, but ended up in men's underwear - I sold a nice silk pair to Rod Stewart," she recalls. "After that I knew I didn't want to work in retail."

So she moved into the Harrods press office and gained her first exposure to promotions and organising media events, including the traditional celebrity opening of the Harrods sale. After Harrods, she spent seven years at PR agencies before moving to mainstream marketing in 1994 with a job at Midland Bank as head of advertising and promotions.

Her biggest break came in 1997 when she wrote a paper on the need to build a brand strategy to meet the threat from the entry into the financial services market of the likes of Virgin and Marks & Spencer. Shortly after came the decision to globally rebrand to HSBC and Furneaux-Harris was moved into the team, headed by Hughes, that developed and executed the £22m rebranding marketing programme.

This ignited her interest in brands, which she describes as a passion.

She is currently writing a book, The Story of Brands, which traces their history. "The word comes from the Norse verb 'to burn', don't you know?"

From HSBC she moved to Barclays, and made a name for herself by scrapping the bank's marketing services department, slashing its number of suppliers, and setting up an in-house marketing agency, The Circle.

It was a revolutionary move for a bank, but within six months of its launch a new broom in the shape of marketing director Simon Gulliford had arrived from Emap with ideas of his own, including scrapping The Circle.

Furneaux-Harris made for the door: "I'd put my heart and soul into The Circle."

As for her move from banking to the dirty world of tabloid journalism, she admits to not being a Sun reader. Friends say Harpers & Queen might be a more natural habitat for her. However, she is prepared for the challenge ahead. The guardian of a newspaper brand, unlike most other brands, is not the marketing director, but the editor. Furneaux-Harris accepts that forming a close bond with her editors will be crucial to her success.

Developing innovative, cost-effective promotions that translate into an immediate sales gain will be the greater part of her job. But she insists the papers must invest in brand marketing if they are to address a long-term decline in sales. "You have to maintain those brands as thriving assets. Even though they may dominate their sector, you can never be complacent, and I have some ideas for winning brand supremacy." She lets slip that these are likely to involve event sponsorship.

Asked to define the Sun brand, she uses words such as "playful, salt of the earth, caring, giving". Some may find such associations surprising, but Furneaux-Harris is adamant that she knows the brand and can relate to its customers.

"I don't drive a white van, go down the pub, or watch football," she admits. "But I can get into it."

BIOGRAPHY
1994-1998: Head of advertising and promotions to head of marketing
communications, Midland Bank
1999-2002: Marketing services director, Barclays Bank
September 2003: Marketing director, News Group Newspapers