Yahoo CMO Leaves for As-Yet Unnamed Consumer Brand
(Promo) Yahoo chief marketing officer Cammie Dunaway has become the latest C-level executive to leave the Web portal/search engine since co-founder Jerry Yang stepped in to replace former CEO Terry Semel last June.
Yahoo has confirmed that Dunaway will leave for “another opportunity” after four years with the company but will not specify where she is headed. Press reports say that Dunaway, a former marketing head with Frito-Lay, has also confirmed that her departure is set for Nov. 2 and that she will reveal her new employer later on this week.
In an e-mail to Web news site Valleywag, Dunaway said that her new post will be with a “big, well-loved consumer brand” and give the “the opportunity to be the coolest Mom in the universe.” Speculation on her next destination includes Nintendo, Disney or Apple.
Faced with overwhelming competition from Google, Yahoo has taken numerous countermeasures over the last three years, including alignment with content creators under Semel and a total re-design of the Yahoo search marketing platform. But these moves have failed to chalk up a solid win either with marketers or Wall Street. Just last week Yahoo!’s third quarter financial results– 12% revenue growth compared to the same period in 2006 — were completely dwarfed by Google’s year-over-year 57% Q3 growth.
Perhaps due to that persistent second-place status, or possibly because of a corporate reorganization that began even before Yang stepped in as CEO in June, the company has seen a steady exodus of prominent managers in 2007. Chief technology officer Farzad Nazem resigned in June.
Many have gone to digital start-ups, as former Yahoo Steven Mitgang did last July, taking a post as CEO of Internet TV platform Veoh Networks. Others have gone into interactive advertising. Former Yahoo! Media Group executive producer Todd Krieger is now a senior vice president with Denuo, the new digital ad arm of Publicis Groupe.
Yet others have made their way to publishing. Wenda Millard, the former chief U.S. ad sales officer for Yahoo! who left the company last June and now serves as president of Martha Stewart Omnimedia.
