Biographies

Managing Director, BBC Worldwide Global Brands

Marcus Arthur has been BBC Worldwide's Managing Director, Global Brands, since the business was set up in March 2008.

His business area works in conjunction with other departments to drive greater value from BBC Worldwide's leading international and multi-format properties, such as Lonely Planet and Top Gear. In October 2008, Doctor Who and BBC Earth – an aggregating brand for all BBC Worldwide's natural history content – was added to the portfolio.

Marcus is responsible for the management of Lonely Planet, which BBC Worldwide acquired in October 2007. His role oversees the transformation of the leading travel information group from a largely travel book business to a more diversified travel information provider.

Under his management, the business has strengthened its digital activity with a relaunched website which is already seeing a 20% increase in traffic, and deals with Apple and Nokia to develop bespoke applications for their respective mobile phones.

He is tasked with building Top Gear into a global franchise as the world's biggest motoring brand. During his tenure, the brand has diversified into books and DVDs, formatted series – with two in Australia and Russia – and a live tour, which travelled to major cities in the UK and around the world, and was watched by 300,000 people.

Marcus also leads the teams devising strategies around the multi-platform aggregator brand BBC Earth, as well as children's favourite Doctor Who.

BBC Earth will look to drive better value from the BBC's rich resource of natural history content and ensure that credit for the production of all these properties goes back to the BBC, while the strategies around Doctor Who will focus on the arrival of the 11th Doctor in 2010 and the commercial opportunities that it presents.

Marcus began his career in advertising sales, joining BBC Worldwide in 1991.

In 1996 he moved from ad sales to become publisher for Gardeners' World, launched Good Homes, followed in swift succession by Good Food and finally Top Gear.

In 2001 he completed an MBA at Ashridge Business School.

A year later Radio Times was added to his responsibilities and in 2005 he was promoted to Managing Director, BBC Magazines (London).

Two years later, Marcus took responsibility for the transformation of a number of BBC Worldwide magazine titles to the web, overseeing delivery of the infrastructure for all BBC Worldwide's passion sites.