Apple Inc. is sticking to their trusted guns. One of the company’s most influential executives, and incidentally the world’s second best-known Casanova, is taking over as Apple Head of AR Marketing. Frank Casanova was instrumental in kickstarting iPhone products long way back, and is now poised to martial his expertise in promoting Apple Augmented Reality efforts.
Apple keeps dropping one AR hint bomb after another. We haven’t really digested the rumored 3D camera improvements set to appear sometime next year, when this. A quick stroll to Casanova’s LinkedIn profile reveals telling words, that he is ‘responsible for all aspects of Product Marketing for Apple’s Augmented Reality initiative’. As things stand, that’ll be advances in ARKit, patent utility, and fingers crossed, native AR support to iPhones.
For anyone further interested in the man’s resume, let us just say that iPhone owes its popularity to him. It is probably an exaggeration, but one does not get to be an Apple executive for 30 years and not partake in the company success. Frank Casanova has promoted the products, the iPhone in particular, spread it around the world, and was even there to witness and promote Apple’s QuickTime video player. He is the company veteran who has been around since 1988, and who spent last 12 years as Senior Director of Apple’s iPhone partner marketing after holding similar position for MacOS X Graphics.
One might argue that Apple Augmented Reality doesn’t really need any marketing. After all, wasn’t a single Tim Cook TV appearance enough for everyone to rave about Apple AR afterwards? Sure thing, although high profile business doesn’t really work that way. For potential partners to take Apple Inc. more seriously in an increasingly crowded industry, the company structure needs to reflect ambition. The former Senior Director of Marketing Michael Gartenberg explains this vert succinctly: ‘There’s now a name and a face on Apple AR efforts and a person with a track record of working on advanced technology projects at Apple’. Means that Apple has recognized AR as one of its primary fields of interest and has appointed its top marketing talent to lead it. ‘Frank is the ideal person to lead Apple’s efforts in AR’, Michael Gartenberg concludes.
The news of Casanova elevation comes in the wake of parting with another corporate executive, Avi Bar-Zeev. After two years of working to boost Apple Augmented Reality push, the former long-time Google and Microsoft employee has quietly left the boat. He is credited as one of the inventors of HoloLens and was rumored to running the Apple AR Glasses operations. An Apple spokesperson however declined to comment on either Bar-Zeev’s departure or Casanova’s new appointment.
Opening of the Apple Augmented Reality Head of Marketing position means a great deal to the industry in general. Make no mistake, AR is still very young for the full adoption that it is aiming for. And this is the way to achieve it, by having large corporations make a concentrated effort with their internal structure matching their words.
