Adrian Odds (pictured) has joined as Business Development Director, Rachel Webb has joined as Account Director across the NBTY portfolio, Lucinda Lane has joined as Acting Publisher across the Superdrug portfolio and Siriliya Nawalkar has joined as Group Account Director and Publisher for Weight Watchers Magazine in the UK and France.
CEO Nicola Murphy says: “There is a buzz about River at the moment, which is making us feel very excited about the future; we are delighted to be attracting new talent like Adrian, Siriliya, Lucinda and Rachel to River. Their depth of knowledge of the business and multichannel experience brings added weight and new ideas to our work.”
Business Development Director Adrian Odds says: “Nicki and Jane as owners of The River Group are an inspiration to entrepreneurs everywhere and to have the privilege of working so closely with them in the growth of the business is incredibly exciting.”
Adrian started his career in magazines in 1993 at Natmags before moving to IPC Southbank. He made the break into customer publishing in 2004 as the launch Publisher of a parenting magazine for The National Family and Parenting Institute at Redactive and hasn’t looked back since. Following a successful 3 years as Ad Director for Boots health&beauty at Redwood, he moved to Seven via Bounty to work as Sampling Director on the Sainsbury’s Account going on to develop a successful retail media proposition, Retailplus, in partnership with Seven and REL Field Marketing. Adrian joined River as Business Development Director at the beginning of May 2011.
Group Account Director and Publisher for Weight Watchers Magazine Siriliya Nawalkar says: “Weight Watchers is such an iconic brand and it’s great to be part of an accomplished team at River producing a range of high quality multi-platform media products that our readers love. This is also a very exciting time for Weight Watchers Magazine France which launched in January this year and outperformed all expectations. I am looking forward to establishing it as a market-leading slimming title in this territory.”
Siriliya worked in IPC’s Circulation and IT departments before becoming IPC Media’s International Publisher working across the whole of IPC’s portfolio and developing their international editions globally. In her time doing this role she developed brands such as Livingetc, Woman & Home, Wallpaper*, Golf Monthly and Decanter.
Acting Publisher Lucinda Lane says: I’m really excited to be joining River at this time, and I am very much looking forward to building on my experience with a dynamic role in a high-flying leading agency.
Lucinda started her publishing career at Citrus Publishing (the company later merged with John Brown) where she worked across big brand lifestyle accounts in an editorial capacity, moving then into account management. After a long stint in PR which spanned campaigns for a range of health and beauty clients, Lucinda made the jump back into publishing and joined Seven Squared in an account management role, working across the Sainsbury’s portfolio. Lucinda has a strong retail account background and a wealth of commercial experience which equip her well for the new challenge at River.
Account Director Rachel Webb says: “It feels really good to be here and to be working with such a highly-regarded editorial and commercial team bent on providing valid, engaging and measurable content both off and online for customers shopping across the Holland & Barrett portfolio"
Having started out in oil shipping operations, Rachel spent 5 years at Warner Music in the business and legal affairs department. In 2002 she followed her passion for magazines, heading to IPC to work on Wallpaper* where she became Assistant publisher and Marketing executive. Moving into customer publishing in 2005 she joined John Brown Media to work predominantly on John Lewis and the Swarovski Business as well as a variety of other accounts. Rachel's retail experience continued to grow when she joined Redwood in 2008 to manage Homebase moving on to the Boots account to oversee the launch of a Beauty & fragrance brochure. Her time at Redwood culminated with the M&S Account director role where she directed and developed the suite of client publications. Rachel joined River as Account Director on the NBTY portfolio at the end of May 2011.
About River
River says: “River is the leading independent customer publisher in the UK, producing publications for clients including The Co-operative, Superdrug, Virgin Holidays, Honda and Holland & Barrett.”
