The VP and global head of sales at Snapchat, Jeff Lucas, has resigned from the organization. Sources from within the organization confirmed that Lucas is leaving to “pursue other opportunities.” However, the source refrained from giving any further comment related to the matter.
In 2016, Lucas joined Snapchat’s parent company; he was responsible for leading direct advertising sales. However, he did not supervise the company’s transition to programmatic. Lucas was also responsible for developing relationships with advertisers that were doubtful about spending money on a mobile app that functioned under the baseline of disappearing photo messages. In the last four months, he is the third leading executives to leave the organization. Snapchat lost its head of product in January and its head of engineering in November.
Snap is not currently looking for a replacement for Lucas. Instead, the company is assuming a distributed-leadership model which would have five executives reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer, Imran Khan. These executives are Luke Kallis, head of West Coast sales, Sharon Silverstein, head of central U.S. region sales, Brett Wein, now head of East Coast sales, Claire Valoti, who would be managing the entire international sales, and Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, who will be in-charge of the team dedicated to agencies and key accounts.
When questioned about the recent string of departures at Snap, the source said that the company has undergone “fairly significant shift” in the last one year. Following the restructuring, “some people will choose to leave, other people may not,” the source said.
Just last week, Snap reported its best quarter since its March 2017 IPO. The company beat Wall Street revenue expectations for the fourth quarter of 2017 and posted the largest net user addition in over a year. In that announcement, the company also stated they paid more than $100 million to their media partners during Q4.
“There are two big factors that may lead to subpar performance from Snap compared to other social platforms: a lack of user data and a lack of ad engagement,” said Michelle Steinberg, founder of public-relations firm Domain Integrated, who has worked on campaigns for brands including Toyota Motor Corp.
