MSN Attracts A Consumer Packaged Goods Exec To Its Ranks

by Tobi Elkin, Sep 23, 2004, 12:00 AM

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Microsoft Corp.'s MSN on Thursday named Jane Boulware, a former Kimberly-Clark Corp. executive, to the post of corporate vice president, global marketing. Boulware is charged with leading the MSN brand on a global basis, overseeing the development of its consumer image, and other awareness-building efforts for MSN products and services.

In the newly created position, Boulware is tasked with making MSN the most relevant and trusted brand among consumer online services over the next five years, according to Microsoft. She is responsible for MSN's global marketing, advertising, public relations campaigns, and consumer research efforts. She'll also spearhead the development of Microsoft's marketing strategy for Internet services in conjunction with marketing leaders from the Office and Windows divisions.

Over the course of her 17-year career at Kimberly-Clark, Boulware worked on the Huggies, Scott, and Kleenex brands in a variety of marketing, brand, and business management roles. Since 2000, she was vice president of marketing services for the paper goods marketer, overseeing the marketing research, advertising, promotion, interactive, packaging, and design departments. During her tenure at Kimberly, Boulware led the development of the company's Brand Equity Management initiative, which focused on creating a consumer-centric approach to brand-building. Among the initiative's achievements was the creation of Brand Builder, a marketing technology system designed to integrate sales, finance, the supply chain, and other functions influenced or led by marketing.

Boulware also served as vice president of Go to Market at Kimberly; was director of marketing for Latin America; and was director and vice president of Scott Products following the $9.4 billion merger of Kimberly-Clark and Scott in 1995. The Pull-Ups and GoodNites product launches that she led both received Effie awards; the awards are given annually by the New York American Marketing Association in recognition of the year's most effective advertising campaigns.

Notably, in recent years, Kimberly-Clark has made strides in online advertising, participating in one of the first cross-media optimization studies under the auspices of MSN and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Its marketing executives have been active participants at interactive industry events. "Jane's track record as an industry leader in consumer brand marketing makes her the ideal addition to the MSN management team," said David Cole, senior vice president of the MSN and Personal Services Group, in a prepared statement. "Her approach to marketing and building brands will help MSN become an even more recognizable and consumer-friendly network of services." Boulware will report to Judy Gibbons, who was named a year ago as corporate vice president, global sales and marketing for MSN.

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