Charl

The BBC has appointed its first Chief Brand Officer, reporting to Kerris Bright, Chief Customer Officer. 

The hunt has been going on since May, and has ended with Charl Bassil, 50, who's been Chief Marketing Officer for Absolut Vodka in Stockholm since 2019. 

Charl was born to Lebanese parents in Klerksdorp, outside Johannesburg, went to St Conrad's College there, and then studied mechanical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. He still has a home in Cape Town. 

Like DG Tim Davie, he started off with Proctor & Gamble, and then studied further at Insead, Kellogg School of Management, and Harvard. He worked at consultants Bain, and then spent ten years with brewers SAB Miller. There followed five years looking after the marketing of Pernod Ricard in southern Africa, alongside a spell as Honorary Consul for the Lebanon in Cape Town, before the move to Sweden. 

Charl has his own podcast series, natch, called Bridging The Gap.