Roblox taps Xbox for CMO as it splits marketing and comms

Roblox has hired Xbox’s Jerret West as CMO and head of market expansion.

West will report to Roblox CEO David Baszucki and oversee the platform’s marketing, creative, international and growth marketing teams.

“We look forward to having [West] join the leadership team starting July 1 to work with us as we continue to scale and bring our vision to connect a billion people globally with optimism and civility,” a Roblox spokesperson said via email.

Barbara Messing previously served as Roblox’s chief marketing and communications officer until November 2023, when she said that she was taking a gap year to focus on travel and board work for AppLovin and Vacasa. 

Roblox is breaking its chief marketing and comms officer role in two. Desiree Fish, who has led comms and marketing during Roblox’s CMO search, will step up as chief communications officer, reporting to Baszucki alongside West. She has overseen the platform’s global comms strategy as VP of global communications since January 2021.

Roblox has been busy rolling out ad products this year. The platform launched in-game video ads in May, less than a month after enabling programmatic media buying through PubMatic. In late April, Walmart started selling physical products to players in-platform, Digiday first reported.

The platform reported a net loss of about $271 million in Q1 2024 but a 17% year-over-year increase in average daily active users to 77.7 million.

West previously served as CMO at Xbox beginning in December 2019. His last day will be June 30, according to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer’s internal memo to Xbox employees first reported by The Verge.

His team was responsible for developing marketing strategies for games, hardware and services, such as Game Pass and the launch of the Xbox Series S/X consoles.

Microsoft is creating a gaming marketing team under Kirsten Ward, VP of Xbox integrated marketing, The Verge reported. That marketing function will sit inside Microsoft’s game content and studios division led by Matt Booty.

This is the second time Microsoft has changed its gaming structure following an executive departure this year. Kareem Choudhry, former corporate VP of Xbox emerging technologies, left in April, prompting Microsoft to move his team to Xbox’s hardware business and create a new Xbox experiences and platforms team.

Microsoft also altered its gaming structure following its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October. It promoted Bond to Xbox president and Booty to president of game content and studios. In the following months, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and chief communications officer Lulu Cheng Meservey departed the company without direct replacements.