Microsofties Ponder Fate of Mark Penn in the New Nadella Regime

Of all the many executives on the “Senior Leadership Team,” called SLT for short at Microsoft, it’s pretty clear in talking to top execs that there is none that engenders more talk than Mark Penn. He currently reports directly to the CEO as EVP of Advertising and Strategy — having been hired full-time by his longtime friend Steve Ballmer in mid-2012, first as a strategist. …

One thing that has been welcomed at Microsoft is Penn’s relentless focus on using data to determine what works, which is much lauded within, although some think he also manipulates it to his advantage. Along with whether data should be the key determinant of an ad, there is, in fact, something unusual in that Penn is responsible for measuring the effectiveness of an ad he created. CONT.

Kara Swisher, Re/code

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