Roger Fingas
In a rare move for an Apple executive, new retail head Deirdre O'Brien has joined Instagram, inaugurating her account with a handful of photos from a worldwide business tour.
O'Brien is on the service as @deirdre.at.apple. Two photos were shot in Hong Kong, including Apple IFC Mall, while a third was shot at Apple Cotai Central in Macau.
Any reason for the focus on Chinese territories is unknown. O'Brien is visiting many other retail teams in cities such as Austin, Cupertino, and Paris.
That would make sense, since predecessor Angela Ahrendts took a similar tour after joining Apple in 2014. Presumably O'Brien's goal is to not only familiarize herself with locations but endear herself to the retail workforce.
Apple executives normally limit their social media activity to Twitter. There are exceptions, particularly with CEO Tim Cook, who periodically posts on China's Weibo — likely with the help of Mandarin-speaking assistants.
O'Brien was appointed senior VP of "Retail + People" in February, combining her previous role with a new one.
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8 Comments
Who cares
More power to her. As long as she can keep a good thing going and find ways to improve the retail experience.
In the Far East there are a lot of people who love and hate certain numbers. Does anyone have the actual addresses of the Apple stores in the Orient to see if they selected the right "feng shui" for their addresses? The most popular numbers over there are 8, 99, 888, 168, 998. Eg, 168 sounds like the Cantonese words for "Sure Easy Fortune", 9 is "long time" and 99 is "eternal." The number 4 sounds like the Cantonese word for "death" but oddly sounds like the Shanghainese word for water so is considered lucky in the city of Shanghai. In most of China they skip the number 4 in building floors (including 40-49) but in Shanghai those floors might actually exist because the number 4 is lucky there.