Pandora’s Nicole McInnes resigns weeks after signing brand’s biggest ever sponsorship deal
Music streaming service Pandora has seen the sudden departure of its marketing director, Nicole McInnes, just weeks after she closed the deal to splash the brand across The Voice.
McInnes confirmed she had left the company last week but declined to comment further.
Nicole McInnes took Pandora into mainstream advertising for the first time
Her departure comes as New Zealand trade title Stop Press reported former NZ commercial director Melanie Reece had launched a workplace grievance with the company after resigning at the end of last year.
McInnes joined Pandora in 2014 from Adshel and began to move the company’s marketing from a word-of-mouth and SEO-driven model to one embracing a mainstream branding message.
The brand launched its first ever local above-the-line branding campaign in November last year, asking artists and listeners to share their first music experiences.
“Music influences us in so many ways. It triggers memories of seminal moments in our lives, it connects us as those first songs and bands become our own personal and collective soundtrack,” McInnes said at the time.
This year McInnes plunged Pandora’s marketing budget into The Voice as one of eight major sponsors of the Nine talent quest.
And last week Pandora announced the appointment of former Fairfax agency group director Fiona Roberts as its new sales director for NSW and Queensland.
Pandora has also been aggressively selling itself against rival Spotify as an advertising platform, as the streaming services look to take ad revenues from commercial radio.
