Twitter hires Anthem PR executive Kristin Binns as senior director of communications
Kurt Wagner / Recode : Tweets: @kristinbinns and @leslieberland Tweets: Kristin Binns / @kristinbinns : Thanks @leslieberland! So jazzed to join team @twitter. Can't think of a more relevant and dynamic place to be! https://twitter.com/... Leslie Berland / @leslieberland : Excited to announce @kristinbinns joining our team leading corporate and consumer communications for @Twitter! Thrilled to have her!
Context & Ripple Effects
The hire slots into a communications rebuild that began in January with Leslie Berland's appointment as CMO from American Express — Binns arrives as senior director of corporate and consumer communications, reporting into Berland's organization per her welcome tweet.
The seat has since proven transient: by mid-2018 Binns had left for Activision Blizzard (as chief communications officer), while rival platforms were also poaching marquee names — Instagram brought in Kristina Schake from Hillary Clinton's campaign the year before.
First-order effects
- Twitter gains a senior director leading corporate and consumer communications under CMO Leslie Berland, filling out the marketing leadership she was hired to build in early 2016.
- Anthem loses a PR executive to a consumer tech platform, continuing the flow of brand-side communicators into social media companies.
Second-order effects
- Twitter and Instagram are bidding against each other for the same pool of high-profile political and corporate communications talent, raising the price of reputation management across social platforms.
Third-order effects
- Binns' two-year tenure before departing for Activision suggests top communications roles at consumer platforms function as career waypoints rather than long-term posts, forcing each company to repeatedly re-staff its public face.
The trend: Social media platforms are cycling through high-profile communications executives as they compete for credibility with press, advertisers, and regulators.