Facebook snatches former Apple exec from Levi's to head global marketing
Van Dyck is joining the social networking website to help it focus on consumer marketing, an area that the company admitted in its IPO filing that it has neglected, AdAge reported on Friday (via The Next Web). Though the news was originally reported by people familiar with the matter, a Facebook spokeswoman did confirm the hiring later in the day.
Apple hired Van Dyck away from the Wieden + Kennedy advertising agency in 2007, where she had served as the global account director on the Nike account for years. She then spent four years at Apple, first as the senior director of worldwide advertising and then as senior director of worldwide marketing communications and advertising.
Van Dyck revealed in an advertising conference keynote last year that her first day at Apple had left a deep impression on her, as it was the day that co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone.
"[The iPhone] was something created from the outside in, by how it felt to the consumer and the user experience going through it," she said. "[Jobs] gave it to the engineers and said, 'Make it fit in there.' It was first and foremost about the user experience. And that's how I approach marketing, that theme of focusing on the user experience and what's important to the customer."
Former Apple product manager Bob Borchers recently said as much when he said in a lecture that Jobs had told the original iPhone team to create "the first phone that people would fall in love with."
After leaving Apple, Van Dyck served as chief marketing officer at Levi's, where she oversaw the company's "Go Forth" campaign.
Facebook revealed in this week's filing that it had spent $28 million on advertising last year. The company expects to raise $5 billion in its IPO and may attain a valuation as high as $100 billion.
11 Comments
Another 'I knew Steve, so I am great too' person.
Another 'I knew Steve, so I am great too' person.
All I can say to Rebecca Van Dyck and Facebook is Pax Vobis
My o my what a surprise. Good luck Rebecca marketing a brand on its accent in the cool factor world that Apple still has a dominance in.
She must yearn for the fact that she'll be marketing a mass market brand with no edge at all left in it.
Oh how fun.There is only one Apple, and Facebook is headed down the road of MySpace. Yea yea I know I know it's way bigger yada yada yada.
Rebecca you'd be so much cooler if you landed this gig at the NEXT big thing rather than yesterday's news.
Another 'I knew Steve, so I am great too' person.
What does your comment have to do with her getting hired by FaceBook?
You think she wrote this article? And you think she wrote it because she knew Steve Jobs?
How about another, "we will write a story about someone who knew Steve Jobs so we can get page hits"?
You're so right. Apple completely dominates social. An area it doesn't even compete in. Now that's talent. If you knew anything about numbers; you'd quickly see that Facebook affects more users than Apple ever has and perhaps even never will. Apple is pretty damn far from hitting 1B people.
I don't really get what your obsession with "cool" is. A product s used because it services the user unless you're in high school of course in which case it's all about being cool.
My o my what a surprise. Good luck Rebecca marketing a brand on its accent in the cool factor world that Apple still has a dominance in.
She must yearn for the fact that she'll be marketing a mass market brand with no edge at all left in it.
Oh how fun.There is only one Apple, and Facebook is headed down the road of MySpace. Yea yea I know I know it's way bigger yada yada yada.
Rebecca you'd be so much cooler if you landed this gig at the NEXT big thing rather than yesterday's news.