Today we can confirm that Beth Ann Kaminkow, President and CEO of Omnicom’s Tracy Locke, has joined Westfield Group as Global CMO.
Westfield is one of the world’s largest shopping center companies. Based in Australia, the group owns more than 23,000 retail outlets in locations ranging from Sydney to Rio.
Kaminkow, who became Tracy Locke’s first female CEO in 2011 and has made contributions to Ad Age and other trade pubs, will report to Michael Gutman, Westfield’s Managing Director of UK, Europe and new markets.
Here’s the internal memo:
We are pleased to announce that Beth Ann Kaminkow has accepted the position of Chief Marketing Officer for our international business (non-Aus/NZ) reporting to Michael Gutman in her international role and to Greg Miles for US business. For the UK/European business, Myf Ryan, Director of UK and Europe Marketing will continue to lead the marketing effort dually reporting to Peter Miller and to Beth Ann in her international role.
In recognition of the rapidly changing retail and digital environment, we have focused heavily over the past few years on building our capacity in consumer facing segments. As you know, becoming a more consumer centric organisation is a key underpinning of our strategy to build and develop iconic destinations in the world’s great cities. We began the process of re-focusing our efforts in this direction with the creation of Westfield Labs in San Francisco with Kevin McKenzie spearheading this effort. This was followed last year with the creation of a Global Entertainment and Brand Sponsorship Group in New York headed by Charley Delana. These two efforts are now joined by what will be a very significant focus to strengthen our marketing and brand strategies, to be headed by Beth Ann based in our Los Angeles office.
Beth Ann will help sharpen our strategic focus on and define our vision for brand and marketing. She will be working in close partnership with Kevin, Charley and their teams, to develop and implement leading edge products and platforms that will significantly enhance consumer experience, while driving traffic and revenues to benefit our retailers. This partnership – in close collaboration with our shopping centre operational and development teams – is designed to innovate and transform the shopping experience. We believe that we have acquired an unique set of talents to drive this effort that should provide a huge competitive advantage for years to come.
Beth Ann comes to us from the agency world, where she led a very large team as the Chief Executive Officer and President of TracyLocke, an Omnicom company. Under Beth Ann’s leadership, TracyLocke became both a market leader and innovator in the broad retail space, with particular skills in converging digital and physical marketing and sales. At TracyLocke, Beth Ann built a high performing culture and team, which enjoyed superior financial results in a difficult environment for agency businesses. She pioneered a variety of omnichannel retail offerings, most notably Buy Design, for clients such as PepsiCo, Gatorade, Samsung, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Reebok, Chase, and T-Mobile. She brings to us a strong track record and a great passion for the effecting change in our rapidly changing retail environments.
Beth Ann will be joining us at the beginning of August, but will be spending considerable time in the interim period, meeting with a variety of key people to expedite her orientation to Westfield.
Please join us in welcoming Beth Ann to the team.