Anne MacDonald Out At Macy’s

Anne MacDonald, the chief marketing officer for Federated Department Stores who gave US newspaper publishers some blunt advice on what they need to do to continue getting the bulk of her near $1 billion ad budget, is suddenly herself out of a job. A company spokesman would not say why, but said her duties would be taken over by Peter Sachse, chairman-CEO of macy’s.com who was the marketing manager MacDonald had replaced when she came to Federated 15 months ago.

She had joined Federated from Citigroup with the main task of building the Macys brand name. Federated has been buying up department store chains across the country and consolidating them under the Macy’s umbrella. and she made no secret that she believed TV was a good medium in which to do that, and she was not convinced that newspaper-owned web sites could do a good job for her.

Not that MacDonald was against newspapers, but she told publishers at their Newspaper Association of America New York convention in May that she put more stock in newspaper circulation than she did in website readership and the like. She basically told the publishers that if they wanted to win her money then they needed to win in their markets.

MacDonald may be out because her branding campaign has not been a great success. A company spokesman said that sales in the newly branded Macy’s stores have been disappointing. Overall Q1 sales were down slightly.

Terry Lundgren, CEO of Macy's parent Federated Department Stores, said in a prepared statement “Going forward, our ultimate goal remains to grow sales by driving more customers into our stores and to macys.com."  That sounds like he didn’t think marketing under MacDonald was doing that job.

"By combining the leadership of our marketing and online functions under Peter Sachse, we will be able to more effectively leverage the company's fast-growing online presence as we continue to build Macy's as a national brand through a broad range of marketing tools, including Internet advertising," he said.

Notice that comment on Internet advertising. MacDonald was on record saying she questioned the effectiveness of online advertising, but her CEO obviously thought otherwise, and that could possibly be good news for newspaper publishers.

Federated is now in the midst of changing its corporate name to Macy’s. It operates 850 department stores throughout the US and had 2006 sales of $27 billion. Its total advertising budget is in the region of $1 billion. – June 1, 2007

Keywords:brand marketing,newspaper advertising

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