Cindy McCaffrey, Google's VP of corporate marketing, has confirmed she's leaving the company.
Matt and a few other Voce colleagues had the opportunity to work with Cindy on some PR projects in Google's early years, and while we have since moved on to work with other companies in the space, I know that Cindy has always been spoken of highly within circles here.
Actually, she's been recognized widely for her work at Google. Earlier this year she received the World Technology Award for Marketing and who knows how many other accolades for her career with Google. I think it's safe to say she's had one hellofa ride and it's simply time to move on...
SiliconBeat has more of the details:
McCaffrey has been chugging away at the P.R. business for 20 years, including gigs at Apple Computer, E*TRADE and the 3DO Company. And that's after starting a career as a journalist. She's been at Google more than five years, which means that, post-IPO, she can comfortably go off and do nothing. And that's apparently what she intends to do for now.
McCaffrey shaped Google's low-key marketing approach, rejecting a high-profile campaign in the company's early years in favor of word-of-mouth marketing, colleague Matt Marshall says. "Remember, (then interim marketing V.P.) Scott Epstein brought in some high-powered advertising experts and proposed a massive advertising campaign in late 1999. McCaffrey, siding with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, rejected that approach, saying they'd rather spend their money on developing the best product, which would be the best way of generating publicity. That was a significant step for two reasons. First, because everyone else around them at the time was spending millions on ads. Second, because other search engines (think Excite, et al) had successfully pursued such ad strategies to get a leap ahead of the competition."
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