Sony looks to merchandise.(News)

Sony/ATV has promoted head of film & TV Rachel Iyer to a new director's post in a bid to ramp up its presence in growing areas of business such as merchandising.

With the music synchronisation market becoming ever more crowded, the company's managing director Charlie Pinder says the promotion of Iyer to a newly-created post of synchronisation and marketing director reflects a move to look at additional ways of generating income and activity from its catalogue.

"It is an obvious expansion of what we've been doing really," he says. "It just became increasingly obvious that chasing after syncs is all very well, but it's getting tighter and tighter. We've always realised we are basically a licensing business and we're looking at the bigger picture."

Iyer will still pitch the publisher's catalogue for traditional media such as advertising, films, TV and computer games, but will also oversee an increasing move ...