Uber hires Target CMO Jeff Jones as president, overseeing global marketing, customer service, and operations
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber brought in Target CMO Jeff Jones in August 2016 as president with a broad remit spanning global marketing, customer service, and operations — a bet that a mainstream retail operator could professionalize the ride-hailing company's consumer face. The hire followed an earlier pattern of pulling proven executives out of big tech brands, like luring Joe Sullivan from Facebook to become Uber's first chief security officer.
The arc that followed was short: within about six months Jones quit, saying his beliefs and approach to leadership were inconsistent with what he saw at Uber, and his exit compounded the turbulence around Uber's parallel search for a COO.
First-order effects
- Jones takes direct control of three functions at once — marketing, customer service, and operations — concentrating consumer-facing authority in one president role rather than splitting it across chiefs.
Second-order effects
- When Jones departs after roughly half a year, the vacancy forces Uber to backfill the brand function separately, which it does by hiring Apple's Bozoma Saint John as chief brand officer, while the president exit simultaneously complicates the ongoing COO search.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Uber's executive bench gets rebuilt piecemeal rather than through one structural fix — a CFO seat filled years later by Nelson Chai and a promoted product chief in Manik Gupta — leaving leadership continuity dependent on repeated external hires instead of durable tenure.
The trend: Uber's 2016-2018 executive roster churn shows a hypergrowth company repeatedly importing big-brand operators who struggle to last inside its culture.