Jones will join privately-held ride-hailing app Uber on September 19 to lead the company’s global marketing and operations, Fortune reports.
Advertisement
Target’s marketing chief Jeff Jones is leaving the cheap-chic retail chain and heading to Uber.
Jeff Jones will joining the San Francisco-based startup as president of ridesharing, making him responsible for Uber’s operations, marketing and customer support globally, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a company blog post Tuesday.
According to Target, Jones’ areas of responsibility include corporate communications and public relations, brand and category marketing, enterprise loyalty and all advertising, media and marketing operations. His exit follows the departures of other executives, including the head of merchandising, who have left the Minneapolis-based company.
Target said it would conduct a search to find Mr. Jones’s replacement. “So we went big”, wrote Kalanick, adding that the company realized that its marketing efforts need to be more intertwined with its city operations. Target says that it was using it as a test to see which experiences could be rolled out in stores.
“Target’s marketing team is world class and we are well positioned headed into the important holiday season”, CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement.
Advertisement
Jones’ exit is the latest in a string of executive departures from Target, which has made a series of management changes since previous year. Traffic fell in the second quarter for the first time in a year and a half. It’s also wrestling with other company-specific woes as well as industrywide problems, ranging from a lack of new electronics for sale and lingering disruptions caused by the sale past year of its pharmacy business to CVS. Target’s shares dropped almost two percent since Jone’s resignation was announced.
