Walmart CMO Barbara Messing Moving On

Barbara Messing, who has led Walmart’s strategic marketing efforts as the retail giant’s SVP and chief marketing officer since August of last year, is leaving her post to “return to the Bay Area with her family,” according to an internal memo announcing her departure. Her last day will be Aug. 30.

“During her time at Walmart, she’s led both memorable and effective creative campaigns that reached our customers in new and unexpected ways,” Janey Whiteside, chief customer officer, wrote in the memo. “She’s been an advocate for our customers, encouraging our teams to think differently about how to reach them outside of traditional advertising avenues to truly tell one holistic Walmart story.”

While an official successor has yet to be announced, according to published reports, Michael Francis, former CMO of Target and DreamWorks, will serve in an interim role as the Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart searches for a replacement CMO and SVP of retail marketing.

Francis, who has consulted for Walmart since 2015, has pinch-hit for the mega-retailer before, filling the chief marketer role when former Walmart CMO Stephen Quinn departed in 2016.

Before Messing was Walmart’s top marketer, she was CMO of TripAdvisor. “In her seven years with the company, she helped the world's largest travel site pivot from a media-only site to an e-commerce player by adding the capability to book trips,” reads her bio on Walmart’s corporate site.

Messing is Walmart’s third CMO in four years. She succeeded Tony Rogers last year after he left to head marketing at Sam’s Club, the Walmart-owned members-only club store. Rogers was appointed in 2016 after Quinn, who held the position for nearly a decade, announced his own pending departure.

The memo also announced a restructuring of Walmart’s marketing department, with the creation of a retail marketing team. According to published reports, several employees are joining that team, including David Echegoyen, who will oversee marketing for grocery, pickup and delivery, services and digital acceleration; Brittney Duke, who will be VP of general merchandise marketing; Ciara Anfield, who has been promoted to VP of consumables marketing; Karissa Price, the VP who will manage health and wellness marketing; and Alvis Washington, VP of store experience marketing.