Marketing
Marketing
Marketing
Marketing is responsible for leading a coherent brand strategy for our network of channels and services including Channel 4, E4, Film4, More4 and Channel 4 streaming.
We also prioritise, plan and implement all of Channel 4’s marketing campaigns using a mixture of paid (e.g. digital, social media, posters, radio, print) and owned media (our own airtime and instream on Channel 4)
The marketing function sits within the wider Marketing, 4Creative and Content Communications group, but the Marketing department also comprises the Media Planning, Pictures and 4Voice teams. These teams work with both external and internal partners and talent including our media agencies, photographers and continuity announcers.
Commissioning
Commissioning
Commissioning
Our content is the key to Channel 4’s success.
Our commissioning team work with independent production companies from across the UK to greenlight new programmes.
Channel 4’s commissioning strategy revolves around a few key areas – all designed to drive streaming and transform us into the first Public Service Streamer: Premium Factual, Reality, Scripted, Lifestyle and digital.
Premium Factual: High-quality, must-watch documentaries that say something about the world around us. Recent examples include The Push: Murder on the Cliff, To Catch a Copper, Paula and Dispatches: Russell Brand - In Plain Sight. These shows are made by our Documentaries & Factual Entertainment, Specialist Factual, or News & Current Affairs departments.
4creative
4creative
4creative
Clear. Distinctive. Engaging. Imaginative. This is how we always aim to project our voice and remain true to our values. 4creative is our in-house agency that translates this goal into award-winning output.
4creative forms a core part of our Marketing & Viewer Experience team. About 60 people work here, and it is home to creatives, directors, producers, designers and project managers. Together with Marketing, 4creative are the channel’s brand guardians, working to ensure that the Channel 4 portfolio comes to life in the right way for our audience across every brand touchpoint. We make sure we sound authentic, bringing mischief and optimism at every turn, and sprinkling a little bit of 4ness through everything we do.
Acquisitions
Acquisitions
Acquisitions
As well as commissioning our own programmes, we search high and low for the best programmes and films from elsewhere. To do this, we draw on the Acquisitions team considerable expertise - sourcing content, negotiating deals, planning efficiently and managing our stock of acquired gems. Things move pretty fast in this department, but never at the expense of the attention to detail and careful analysis that goes into ensuring we select programmes that hit the mark.
The Programme Acquisitions team purchases content for Channel 4’s linear channels and Streaming service, acquiring a range of dramas and sitcoms including The Handmaid’s Tale and Modern Family. The department also acquires international reality series such as Married At First Sight Australia and the Below Deck franchise, as well as factual programming across all genres. In addition to series, the team acquires Films from across the globe, from indies like Shiva Baby to huge studio hits like Top Gun: Maverick.
Strategy & Corporate Relations
Strategy & Corporate Relations
Strategy & Corporate Relations
The whole reason C4 exists is to challenge, entertain, educate and surprise our audience. This means we need to know who they are, how they think and what interests them. Our Strategy team makes sure we have this information at our fingertips to inform our creative output and underpin our commercial sustainability.
We are also a public service broadcaster with a wide-ranging remit to fulfil. This means we have close working relationships with Government, Parliament, regulators and numerous stakeholders, both political and corporate. These relationships are managed by Corporate Relations.
Strategy
Where should we go next? How can we get there? Which is the better path? What are the likely obstacles we’ll encounter? Who needs to do what? Strategy answers the big questions we ask ourselves as an organisation and shows us the way.
Commercial Affairs
Commercial Affairs
Commercial Affairs
If there are ‘i’s to be dotted and ‘t’s to be crossed, Commercial Affairs is here to do it. In triplicate. Anything concerning Business Affairs, Production Finance and Legal is dealt with here, whether that’s negotiating contracts or dealing with the small print side of commissions.
Commercial Affairs
Commercial Affairs is big on detail where it matters. It’s here to make sure everything we do, or is done in our name is done properly. This means supporting our subsidiaries and joint ventures, as well as the main channel.
Content Management
Content Management
Content Management
Thanks to Content Management there is always something to see and our viewers know where they can see it. It’s a business-critical department that fulfils a fundamental role. Without it, our portfolio of programmes wouldn’t transmit, screens would be blank and listings would be empty.
Content is full of opportunities. Lean and focused, it operates in a fast-paced environment where anything can happen. And when it does, it responds with speed, agility and accuracy. It collaborates with a wide range of partners, including commissioning and channel management to Ericsson Broadcast Media Services (BMS) and production companies. It’s responsible for supporting content delivery across all scheduled and on-demand services, as well as our listings. This is how the department breaks down:
Channel 4 Ventures
Channel 4 Ventures
Channel 4 Ventures
We are an investment team within Channel 4, specialising in media for equity – where high growth, unprofitable start-ups exchange their shares (‘equity’) for Channel 4 advertising space.
We exist because many high-growth consumer businesses reach a point where their need to scale cannot be matched by the resources or capital available to them.
With its unrivalled reach and high levels of trust, TV remains the best marketing channel for making companies well known by the general public - but many companies can’t commit to spending cash on a TV brand-building campaign.
4Studio
4Studio
4Studio
4Studio is the engine room for C4’s digital acceleration strategy, with the mission to create, adapt and distribute content across social media channels.
In non-corporate spiel, 4Studio is focused on making and publishing content for social audiences, and ensuring that there’s strategy behind every creative idea and individual post to ensure it finds the biggest, most relevant audience possible.
We’ve been built from the ground up to embody everything that makes Channel 4 great – risk-taking, innovation, and creative excellence aimed solely at engaging and representing young, diverse audience.
Technology
Technology
Technology
Our vision as Technology is to inspire the company in the art of the possible. We are charged with development and execution of the Technology Strategy underpinned by the Channel’s Fast Forward strategy. The day to day activities of the group include the change delivery of business aligned systems, and processes, and the foundational provision of secure, efficient, and high-quality IT and Broadcast platforms and services.