Walmart Invests In Its Digital Future With Seth Dellaire as Chief Growth Officer
Seth Dellaire has had a long career in the advertising industry.
He has been leading Walmart Connect - the advertising business. Walmart Data Ventures, and Walmart+ which has experienced a lot of growth under his watch after some early ramp-up period.
It's no surprise that Seth has been promoted to Chief Growth Officer at Walmart. In short, retail is hard -- digital services are easier and higher margin -- it's the way of things right now. In this role, Seth will have full reign over omnichannel product, design, and marketing teams.
Usually I find when someone with a business/sales focus like Seth adds responsibility for things like product and design, the company has found that he has a good pulse on what the customer needs and there are even more services that Walmart plans to announce and improve... and Walmart does not want to wait for the rest of the organization to align with Seth's progress and vision.
It's also a truism that the Amazon execs are taking over at Walmart.
- Manish Joneja SVP Marketplace spent 3 years at Amazon after spending 6 years at eBay.
- Suresh Kumar CTO Walmart spent 8 years at Amazon.
- Seth Dellaire spent almost 8 years at Amazon.
- David Glick, SVP Enterprise Business Services. Almost 20 years former Amazon logistics leader!!
Gone are the days where to be a senior Walmart executive you had to spent 25 years living in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Finally, despite the expanded responsibilities you can't expect an advertising-focused leader not to continue to drive advertising and other data services deeply into the omnichannel experience at Walmart for its brand and marketplace partners. This will likely give Seth a larger perch to do so.
