Facebook named Alex Schultz to be the next chief marketing officer after he was the vice president for analytics and product growth. Schultz announced the news himself on his Facebook profile on Tuesday. This promotion happened after Antonio Lucio has stepped down on the 18th of September after he was the CMO for 2 years before announcing his departure in August.
Lucio stated that he left the job because he wanted to dedicate his time to promoting inclusion and diversity in marketing. Schultz confirmed in his post that he will be working to continue Lucio’s efforts and put his own experience in fields like targeting, measurements, and segmentation. His position suggests Facebook would plan to blend the purpose-led brand building with the historical concentrate on the technological renovation.
Lucio joined Facebook in 2018, he was seen as an intelligent employee, as he was HP and Visa executive before, he was known to work in fields like inclusion and diversity marketing.
Now, Facebook is crossing a minefield of a year that was full of enormous events. It had to face tons of misinformation and rumors. This summer, the company attacked with advertisers’ boycott, with tons of small and large brands stopping their spending to push the platform to have better policies for hate speech. This month, The Wall Street Journal stated that the Federal Trade Commission was planning an antitrust suit against the company.
Facebook promoting someone from inside the company will create a little suppress concern that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has increasingly grown resistant and insular to outside criticism. Despite he was being under the spotlight for years for mounting employee unrest. Schultz has a background in direct response analytics and marketing, so he could be hired as a modern CMO ready to handle demands from making Facebook’s brand image better and ensuring the country’s ability to keep with the fast pace technology trends.
“I have grown up in online marketing and believe deeply in the economic empowerment it can bring, its ability to show people more tailored, relevant, less annoying ads, and the fact it allows us to serve everyone by offering our products for free,” Schultz wrote in his post.
“I believe deeply in the good Facebook’s products do,” he added, calling out the platform’s role as a connector to people physically separated during the coronavirus pandemic. “At the same time I think scrutiny of any new technology is appropriate and there are ways we can, and should, improve without losing all the good.”
Regardless of the dozen of brand image problems, Facebook is competing with a lot of threats from other new competitors. For example, TikTok, which is even facing a potential ban in the US. This week, the company stated that Instagram and Messenger users will be able to chat between both platforms, even if they don’t have one of the applications.
Schultz’s positioning at this same time enlarges the focus on diversity and inclusion which was brought by Lucio on the table. Schultz, who is homosexual, is the executive sponsor of Facebook’s Pride resource group for the LGBT community.
