Meet the Commercial Director: Jen Bennett

Here at History Hit, we have an extraordinary team. But how does each person's role shape the bigger picture, and what unique insights do they bring to our mission to make history more accessible in the digital age?

In this festive feature of Meet the Team, we catch up with Jen Bennett, our Commercial Director and resident history dealmaker! Jen’s all about turning our incredible content into exciting opportunities, balancing spreadsheets, presentations, and partner chats to make history pay its way. With two decades in media, she’s sharing the ingredients for success—and a boozy Victorian hack for dodging cholera. Read on!

Sum up your role in one sentence.

Generating additional value against all the cool content we create.

Take us through a typical day in your role.

My days usually involve a mixture of spreadsheets, presentations and regular chats with partners, advertisers and colleagues about a variety of history-based content opportunities. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t ask the internet “what year did…?”

What are the most enjoyable and challenging parts of your role?

Probably the most creative role of my career, whilst still being critically revenue generating. Biggest challenge is to educate the wider industry on how vast and engaged the History Hit audience is, comparative to the likes of food and travel categories which can be cluttered and undifferentiated.

How did you get into the role?

After 20 years in the media industry, stepping into the role of Commercial Director at such a creative and dynamic company feels like the culmination of countless small, serendipitous decisions that have led me to this point.

What is the most interesting or surprising thing you’ve learned working at History Hit?

There are just too many! Today's discussion was about how spiritualism became very popular in the 1920's. After so many people lost loved ones in WW1 there was a earnest desire to speak to those who died - including the author Rudyard Kipling, who desperately wanted to connect with his dead son.

Any advice for someone looking to get into your field?

No special training in my opinion. Although important I don't believe you need those hard 'sales' skills to be successful. I think if you demonstrate an ambition to make stuff happen and are not deterred to hear a polite 'no thanks' on a fairly regular basis - you'll probably end up in a commercial position at some point in your career, even if you didn't plan on it.

Who is your History Hero (and why)?

My first job after university was right across from the John Snow pub in Soho, named after the physician who discovered that the local cholera outbreak was being spread through contaminated water, not through the air as previously thought. He made this breakthrough after noticing that people who drank from a particular water pump were falling ill, the beer guzzlers less so. That very pump still stands today, and I’d walk past, thinking, "Wow! What an important little pump". Great piece of history, great London boozer!