Early in the game, Pandora hit all the right pockets, made all the more evident by a strong entrée in the IPO space.  Along with other cloud music services, Pandora has become one of the most sought-after brands in the market.  But have they have peaked too soon?  With fierce rivals like Spotify going global, Pandora’s market share is slowly declining, especially in the advertising arena.  As a preemptive move, they have elected Simon Fleming-Wood as the new Chief Marketing Officer.  He is the same guy responsible for introducing Flip video cameras to the world.

An air of excitement embraces this new appointment at Pandora headquarters.  In fact, an elated Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy said, “Simon’s entrepreneurial spirit, history of driving business growth, and experience in creating beloved brands and products are all attributes we’re delighted to have him apply in his new role at Pandora as we grow the business. We’re very pleased he’s here.”

“Deeply honored” is the prefect description for what New CMO Fleming-Wood is feeling at the moment.

“Pandora has built a large and passionate following based entirely on the quality of its service and people. Very few brands are invited into so many people’s lives in such a personal way, every day. I feel privileged at the opportunity to join the Pandora team and contribute to the company’s future growth and success.”

Fleming-Wood carries years of solid experience to the table, mostly from his time as the head of marketing at Pure Digital Technologies, the organization behind the Flip video camera, which stormed its way through the industry by way of 7 million worldwide sales in just 3 years before being deadpooled by Cisco.  This same market aggressiveness is what Pandora hopes of his addition to their team.

With Fleming-Wood on-board, Pandora now has sturdy wings to propel its plan of expanding globally and reaching more and more music enthusiasts.  But before they could even get to the international scene, Pandora has to problem solve some issues that are not only challenging their company, but the industry as a whole. The energy within the tech IPO party is gradually depleting.  And the data explosion, with the social platform being one of the major contributors, is now deemed as a serious challenge to cloud-based services. In this light, individuals like Fleming-Wood will have to face the four data challenges for CMOs. Couple these with Pandora’s difficulty in wooing advertisers and you have a bit of an uphill battle for the newest member of the team.  In the tech sphere where turnover is staple, having a strong marketing strategist and formulating game-changing campaigns could make a big difference.