02
January
2005
|
20:45 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Google searching for top marketing honcho

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com


Cindy McCaffrey, chief marketing officer at Google, resigned just before the holidays. With about five years at the company and about 20 years in the PR business at Apple, 3DO, and E*Trade, she has handled a lot of high profile companies.


At Google, she's credited with a very-low key marketing approach, in fact, hardly any. Veterans know that search engines are ALWAYS created by word-of-mouth. That's certainly the way Yahoo took-off, and HotBot, AltaVista, and of course, Google.


Who will get the chief marketing job? There is already lot of veteran "parental supervision" in the top executives ranks (link to Google's exec's page) and those ranks could do with some young blood. Sergey and Larry must be feeling a bit bored hanging out with all those old folk.


Any votes for anybody? Let's see.........are there are any young-ish marketing/comms whiz kids around? None come to mind. Most of the industry seems full of gray-hairs, waiting for just one more bubble.


Google could promote from within -- maybe David or Raymond? Or maybe an outsider? Maybe yet another person from the Novell-Apple-Sun heritage that fills Google's top ranks? Or maybe it should be someone with an international bent. After all, Google is an expanding global brand, and it needs to understand other cultures. Maybe it will even be someone from the media industry? Google is the only media company I know of that has NO media professionals in its senior ranks. None. (Eric, call me...)