Joe Pollard departs Telstra, with CMO role to be split across business units
Telstra has announced a management shake up which sees marketing boss Joe Pollard leave the telco and former SBS boss Michael Ebeid join as head of enterprise.
Pollard joined Telstra in November 2014. In November 2015, Pollard was promoted to CMO which saw her lead all of Telstra’s media and marketing functions.
Pollard joined Telstra after leaving Publicis Mojo in 2014
Telstra will not be replacing Pollard as marketing will be decentralised to the company’s business units with the CMO role to be dropped from the senior management roster.
“What happens when you take a dysfunctional government corporation, privatise it, and then allow it to pretty much do as it likes? The answer to that question is at the heart of what is no doubt keeping Telstra boss Andrew Penn awake at night”…
http://theluckygeneral.biz/201.....right-now/
Joe Pollard was also non-executive director of AMP Bank when she joined Telstra in 2014.
Great innings in that role. So who is in charge of marketing now that the CMO has departed?
Hi Darwin Rules,
We asked Telstra that question as well and their reply is that marketing will be decentralised to the individual business units so the company will no longer have a central CMO. We have updated the story to reflect that.
Regards,
Paul Wallbank
News Editor
Andy Penn is like the Francesco Schettino of CEOs.
He must go or that ship will sink sink sink.
This strategy will not work, staff will be more miserable, which will impact customer satisfaction.
And it will result in fractured brand – which is not what you need.
Why do they not learn from previous slash and burns? A far smarter strategy would be to do slow and steady change to a well thought out goal, not this sort of carnage.
Bring back Sol.
More creativity and art is what Telstra needs in their future and this should be led from the very top.
If you decentralise marketing and set up separate teams to support each business unit, how does that avoid duplication or silos? Instead of one central buying and strategy function, you now have 5+ and we all know each team leader will immediately start hiring ‘their’ people (creating silos). Does not compute. PS It’s great news for agencies because there will now be five plus decision makers who will all want their own agency.
Thanks Paul. Seems odd not to have centralised responsibility for the holistic Telstra brand. Each business unit making their own ads could create all sorts of confusion….
Bad news for Accenture/TheMonkeys,
Good news for the rest of us who can’t stand the pseudo-poetry that has made every Telstra message sound like Dr. Seuss.
So how exactly does removing the CMO role and decentralising marketing to Telstra’s individual (and numerous) business units equate to a “simplified and streamlined structure (that) remove(s) duplication, hierarchy and silos across the organisation”?
No one there long enough to remember when they had the 7 segments…..lots and lots of duplication and brand guardians who had no skin in the game. More consultative roles! Terrible
Extremely bad news for the twenty people that run the banner ad shop that is RGA Sydney.
The work has had a bit of a 90’s/00’s feel at best. Having one person control all the work, in this instance, wasn’t a good thing.
It means that procurement has just taken over marketing and advertising pitch management entirely. Groan.
Sooooo….to simplify things and avoid duplication , Penn is moving from a single CMO to multiple Marketing heads for each silo/unit. Well that makes sense. Not.
It’s a banner ad transformation shop now.
Well lets face it, Penn is an accountant, not a marketer. That central marketing budget is now gone and BU’s now have to pay their own way out of their own reduced budgets. Agency relationships are now run entirely by bean counters, lowest common denominator stuff. Classic cost-out move by the head bean counter Penn.
Yeah the MBM strategy – 7 segments, none made any sense, stupid names, hard to understand, never used by sales, BU’s organised around these inane segments – what a time to be alive.
What a punchy PR piece from Telstra. Takes about as long to read as it takes the Telstra call-centre takes to answer.
Hey Hmmmm, find your own Hmmmm. I had Hhmmm first 🙂
Why are there always so many comments when there is a Telstra move? Firstly, it happens all the time. Its a a revolving door, get used to it. Secondly, too many spiteful middle management types in there at Telstra with too much time on their hands, ready to make comments. Oh, that’s if their in the office at all – most are “working from home” – Enjoy!
Right about now, I reckon Buckley and the Accenture Partners are thinking ‘are we going to regret this decision to buy an ad agency?’
Remember, Andy Penn’s T22 strategy is being directly informed by McKinsey.
Telstra has a long history of changing agencies and having multiple agencies on their roster. It’s unlikely Telstra will leave the Monkeys, but it is likely some ‘silo’ heads will want their own agency.