CommBank's business incubation arm, x15 Ventures, is on the hunt for a head of marketing and growth to take over the reins of its Kit learning app for kids.

The search for a new marketing chief comes as Kit's current chief brand and marketing officer, Claire McIntyre, moves into a role within the bank.

The open role at Kit includes setting brand, marketing and content strategy, with an emphasis on designing an owned, earned and paid content strategy. The remit is also about managing the partnership with CBA across branches, product teams and CommBank's Yello loyalty program, customer lifecycle management, taking accountability for marketing risk and the P&L, plus working with product, data and design.

The position reports to the managing director and oversees three marketing managers covering brand/partnerships lifecycle marketing and website/SEO and social. In addition to a new marketing and growth head, x15 is looking to hire a paid media spending headcount as part of a plan to bring its paid media spending in-house.

Kit is one of the first products to come out of CommBank's business incubation investment arm, x15 Ventures, launched in early 2020 to invest in ventures that would drive loyalty and innovation at the big four bank.

Having debuted with a goal of investing in 25 ventures, X15 has now invested in 14 ventures, progressed nine ventures across app-based education tools, ecommerce, payments and fintech services, and closed down four. As x15 MD Toby Norton-Smith told Mi3 in an interview last year, the unit is now less focused on the volume of businesses within the portfolio, but on making sure the ventures and services that move the needle are a success. In other words, not a "white flag" but fewer, bigger bets.

As well as the Kit kids learning up, examples of digital mortgage service Unloan, which has already written $4bn in loans; digital concierge service Home-in; credit scoring app CreditSavvy; and hospitality management platform Doshii. https://www.mi-3.com.au/05-12-2023/banking-deeper-tech-integration-and-innovation-drive-customer-loyalty-well-commercial

Mi3 understands McIntyre is moving into a new internal role within the bigger bank, though details have not yet been released.

McIntyre was part of the early team on the Kit learning offering, joining as chief brand and marketing officer in December 2021. Prior to this, she was marketing lead for AI and accelerated discovery business incubation at IBM Research for four-and-a-half years. Her resume also includes both client-side and agency senior roles at Diageo, M&C Saatchi, Maverick PR and Burson-Marsteller.

* With additional reporting by Nadia Cameron