A marketing professional who has served as an advisor to Montauk Brewing Company for the past five years and had been CMO for GroundTruth for the last 12 months is taking a senior-level marketing post at a radio station owner likely to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in one month, now billing itself as “the leading audio company in the United States.”
Eric Hadley will no longer be overseeing marketing for GroundTruth, a location platform that leverages data and insights to drive business performance.
Effective Wednesday (12/19), he’ll now serve as the New York-based SVP/Marketing for iHeartMedia, reporting directly to EVP/CMO Gayle Troberman.
It’s a newly created role, one in which Hadley will “reimagine marketing for advertising partners” — something many radio industry observers have said is overdue for an industry losing market share to streaming audio players such as Spotify and Pandora, and only in the latter half of 2018 responding to the surge in podcast consumption.
Hadley, iHeart says, will work closely with advertising partners advising them on their audio strategy, to ensure that clients understand how to best plan, buy, measure and optimize the audio experience.
Troberman said of Hadley. “It’s important that we have someone who understands data, content, planning and creative. Eric’s experience on the client, agency and media sides of the table will help us continue to lead the way with audio.”
Hadley’s resume includes a 1 1/2-year stint as President of Mission, a digital/social creative agency with offices in N.Y., London and San Francisco. Before taking that role in October 2016, he spent 1 year and 2 months as Head of Global Marketing for Outbrain. For 10 months before that, Hadley was Head of Partner Marketing for Pinterest.
Hadley joined Pinterest in November 2014 after 2 1/2 years as SVP/Sales Marketing & Strategy for The Weather Channel. He arrived there in July 2012 after three years as GM of Microsoft‘s Bing browser, which failed to capture significant market share against Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox.
“I am excited to join the iHeartMedia team,” Hadley said. “As the leader in audio, iHeart has the complete offering needed to help marketers drive results. There are few companies today that have the daily reach and impact of iHeartMedia.”
What he didn’t say in the official iHeartMedia press release but was shared on his LinkedIn profile explains why Hadley took his sixth job in five years.
From January 1996 through February 2012, Troberman was Chief Creative Officer at Microsoft, where she worked closely with Hadley on worldwide marketing for Bing and MSN.
