Francesco Bono

Director Content Programming and Strategy Italy and Spain @Audible

I’m responsible of designing and developing the entire content strategy for ITES, with ownership on budget and planning, and leading other functions and teams towards the common goals: I work in a matrix structure, in close collaboration with EU Managing Director, EU country managers, DE and FR Content Leads, marketing, finance and the regional functional content teams, to create the best, most unique and fully localized content experience for listeners in ITES. I manage relationships with the local creative class - production companies, podcast creators, publishers, writers, narrators, agents, actors and scriptwriters and I am the official spokesperson for Audible Italy and member of the Audible EU Senior Leadership Team.\\\\nAs first person hired for Audible Italy, I worked at the entire development of the team and the service: hiring 25+ people, defining the new All You Can Listen business model (first country to introduce that for Audible worldwide), setting the go-to-market strategy, negotiating deals with content provider, launch of the service in May 2016. I built and led the Italian content team directly for 5 years: 6 directs and 2 dot lines, with 0% attrition and 3 people promoted. In 2017 we closed the first 2 audiobook deals with the most important Italian publishers (Mondadori and Gems). In September 2017 my team launched the audiobook series of Harry Potter, read by Francesco Pannofino. In 2018 we closed the first podcast deal with La Repubblica and La Stampa, and we launched the first podcasts of Audible Originals with a strong lineup of Italian celebrities: until now we produced over 200 Original Italian podcasts. In 2020 I supported the planning for the launch of Audible ES, also in AYCL, and in IT we closed an Original podcast deal with Corriere della Sera, 1st Italian newspaper. In 2022 Audible Originals Italy won 5 Il Pod awards: Best True Crime, Best Documentary, Best Divulgation, Best Society podcasts and Best sound design.\\\\n \\\\n\\\\n \\\\n \\\\n\\\\n \\\\n