Blue Pie Productions is thrilled to announce Marcus Batten has joined the Australian Team as the Director For Corporate Cards. As Damien Reilly says: “It is a great honour for us to be able to have people like Marcus commit their time and energy to the company. We are truely excited about the future and having Marcus on the team.”

Mr. Batten completed a military degree in Maritime Studies, and maintained an interest in broadcast and communications whilst building a career in the Royal Navy. He entered the commercial world selling video conferencing and broadcasting solutions to media and broadcast organisations in the 80s and was heavily involved in the trial and launching of remote television, pay TV and satellite solutions, HDTV and mobile journalist solutions. This was using mobile VSAT and DAMA technologies with the analogue TOC solutions around the world. He represented Australia on numerous broadcasting and entertainment lobby groups and was involved in the multimedia committees for the bids to the 1994 and 1998 Olympics drafted in 1988. The panel was tasked to define the future media communication and broadcast needs in and towards 2000.

Mr. Batten worked on the project teams for C-class spot beam satellites for the Australian satellite networks at Aussat. In the mid 80s, after leaving the military, he worked in an independent financial brokerage in London setting up corporate loans and venture capital for international traders and private investors and was an active member of the Dangerous Sports Club, a not for profit charity association raising money for good causes around the world.

He has a passion for media mobility and virtual ‘in the cloud’ business solutions across business and entertainment and is always one for generating interest and innovation in media, publicity and content, having written restaurant reviews for “About London” in the 80s. Mr. Batten qualified as a journalist and illustrator for Fairfax Media in the early 90s and from time to time has produced articles and works for the media. He has a breadth and depth of experience with sales, support and professional services delivery as well as strong leadership skills, developed within the Enterprise Software and Services market.

He has been intimately involved in all stages of the rollout and introduction of software, Media, telecommunications, IT and business solutions and services in a range of industries and has managed and lead software and system development teams. This has grown from a “hands on” operational risk and change management background in the military and other operational management experiences.

Marcus has a keen interest in virtual banking and retailing and closely follows Alibaba, E-bay and other holistic trading schemes. He has often worked with card trading systems and their virtualisation across frontiers. He first came across the concept of membership reward cards and advantage cards in the 80s and saw how well run membership schemes hung off a card that became a valued possession of the member: they became dependent on the card. He sees that a card can generate that membership, familiarity with an association. He knows that the card builds a feeling of being part of something.

As the director of corporate cards for Blue Pie Investments, Marcus oversees the company client base and manages the global business development team working with Damien Reilly Blue Pie’s CEO, David Murray, Blue Pie’s Chief Strategy Officer and Larry Bortles, Blue Pies Director of Corporate Finance, to drive sales of the firms white label debit cards and debit branded VISA and MasterCard programs. A man with vision and one who knows that the gold is in the detail; we are honoured to have Marcus on the team.