Cheil UK has appointed David Bedford as its digital strategy director, a newly created role at the agency.
Bedford, who is the former head of planning at Gyro, will be responsible for leading the strategic output and the future direction of Cheil’s digital platform business including setting direction for Samsung.com, Members loyalty platform and digital retail strategy across the UK and Europe.
He joins the Cheil board’s digital leadership group providing direction to internal teams as well as building strong client relationships. He reports to David Coombs, the head of strategic services at Cheil UK.
Bedford was also previously head of planning at Geometry. He most recently served as a freelance strategic consultant at Lida where he worked on Costa Coffee and Experian, and Wunderman, where he was strategy lead on BT’s CRM and Shell’s global CRM.
Along with Shell and BT, Bedford has led strategy for brands including HSBC, Visa and Vodafone. He was also behind the creation of Vodafone’s content hub “Your Ready Business.” His work has won the IPA Social Works best practice content effectiveness in social media 2015, and he led the Government “Act FAST” campaign which won an IPA Effectiveness Gold. He has also won two Business Marketing Association Awards of Excellence for Thought Leadership and Content Marketing.
