Cruise joined the business in 2008 when it bought its then £30m print management spend in-house, but his association with Sky dates back to 2005 when he joined TPF [The Print Factory] to look after media inserts and door drops for Sky. Prior to that he worked in newspaper production.
“This industry has been absolutely fantastic to me. But I’m leaving in a very good position and I’m immensely proud of what the team at Sky and our partner suppliers have achieved,” said Cruise.
“There hasn’t been one single day that I woke up not wanting to go to work, not one – and that’s damn good, not many people can say that.”
His departure follows an internal review of some of some of Sky’s marketing functions, which resulted in a proposal to merge some departments, including its print buying and creative production operations. As a result, Cruise said that he requested voluntary redundancy earlier this year so that he could explore new opportunities in the industry.
“The business has been very supportive, but I honestly don’t think that I would have been able to put my heart and soul into a different role here the same way I did with print management,” he said.
“It was the right time, for me and the business to make a move. We’ve had print management in-house for 10 years and we’ve done everything we set out to do: driven savings, increased efficiencies, developed a strong internal team and a fantastic supplier base. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do.”
At its peak a decade ago, Sky’s print marketing spend was more than £20m, but as the business’s needs and strategic focus changed that spend was reduced.
“Communication strategy at Sky is definitely going through change, like it is at a lot of businesses, and that will most likely continue. So we had a grown up discussion, and I made the decision to leave.”
Cruise will leave the business on 27 April and will not be directly replaced. There were no further changes to the print management team.
A regular PrintWeek Awards judge, Cruise said that while he had no firm plans, he hoped to stay in the industry, either in another print management role, or brand side to utilise his experience of bringing buying in-house, or to help print businesses looking to adopt sole-supplier models.
“I won’t be gone for ever, but I’m definitely taking May off. I’m not going to rush into anything, I’m going to take some time to think about what I want to do,” said Cruise.
“I’m sure there are a lot of opportunities out there. 10 years ago the perceived wisdom was to outsource print management, and now it’s come a full circle; every procurement consultant I’ve spoken to is talking about insourcing – insourcing creative, creative production and print management. Sky was ahead of the curve, so perhaps there’s another big brand out there looking to embark on a similar journey?”
