Activision Blizzard appoints new Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer

Activision Blizzard has announced two new senior appointments: chief marketing officer David Messinger and new chief people officer Claudine Naughton. 

Naughton, who’s joined the publisher from HR leadership roles positions within American International Group, worked most recently as executive vice president and chief human resources officer. They replace Brian Stolz, who moves to serve in a new role as a special adviser to CEO Bobby Kotick.

Messinger, who will work under Activision president and COO Coddy Johnson, moves into the company’s first corporate-wide CMO role to “oversee the global marketing operations across all of Activision Blizzard brands”. 

“[Messinger’s] tenure in global entertainment and his expertise in strategic, award-winning marketing campaigns will help our communities to grow and further inspire our players to connect, compete and play,” Johnson told Variety in a statement.

“I have a profound admiration for Activision Blizzard’s track record of developing enduring entertainment franchises,” Messinger said. “I’m thrilled to be joining the company and look forward to collaborating with the many talented teams across the organization as we continue to connect these iconic entertainment properties to the many communities of engaged fans around the world.”

There’s been a lot of change at Activision recently. Activision Blizzard recently parted ways with its CFO, Spencer Neumann, and re-appointed its previous CFO, Denis Durkin, to the position instead. Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime left Activision Blizzard on April 7th, 2019, and shortly after his co-founder, Frank Pearce, also followed suit. The news came via a tweet on the official Blizzard Twitter account, which said: “After more than 28 years, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce is hanging up his armor – thank you for everything, Frank, and best wishes for the future!”