CNN Hires Peacock Exec Anna Frost as Head of Worldwide Marketing

CNN has hired Anna Frost, a top marketing exec at NBCUniversal’s Peacock — and a CNN alum — as head of marketing for CNN Worldwide.

In the role, Frost will oversee CNN’s consolidated brand marketing and growth marketing groups. She will oversee creative, brand strategy and growth and performance marketing under a new structure at the news organization, spanning all of CNN’s global platforms and subscription services.

CNN’s marketing teams have been overseen by Karen Bronzo, Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief global marketing officer for U.S. networks and news. Bronzo had extended her duties to include CNN in July 2023. Amid the pending Paramount Skydance takeover of WBD, CNN CEO Mark Thompson and Channing Dungey, chairman/CEO of Warner Bros. Television Group and U.S. networks, recently announced that Bronzo is returning to focus full-time on marketing for WBD U.S. networks.

At CNN, Frost will report directly to chief operating officer Alex MacCallum, who was promoted to that post last month. Front will be based out of Los Angeles.

“As we continue to transform and deliver our journalism to global multiplatform audiences, we are thrilled to welcome Anna back to CNN to lead global marketing,” MacCallum said in a statement. “Anna’s experience in developing a best-in-class marketing function as well as driving subscription growth amidst rapid change in our industry will help CNN grow our programming and journalism across platforms and drive direct-to-consumer success.”

Most recently, Frost worked at NBCUniversal as Peacock’s senior VP and head of growth and lifecycle marketing and go-to-market strategy. Prior to joining NBCU in September 2022, she had spent a little less than a year at CNN — where she had led growth marketing for CNN+, the short-lived subscription streamer. Before that Frost was VP of digital marketing at Live Nation Entertainment and earlier spent more than 13 years at Disney where she held leadership positions in the Mouse House’s direct-to-consumer and international, television and studio divisions.

After the exit in mid-2023 of Kristine Coratti Kelly, who was CNN’s EVP and global head of marketing and communications under then-CEO Chris Licht, the news org’s marketing and comms teams were split apart. Communications remains a unit reporting to Thompson, and now CNN’s marketing group will fall under MacCallum’s purview.