Facebook’s VP of Marketing, Rebecca Van Dyck, has been chosen to take over the role of CMO at Oculus.

TechCrunch confirmed the story late last week, which initially broke via an unnamed Facebook spokesperson. It’s only now that Oculus has officially released word, with CEO Hugo Barra announcing the news on twitter. Barra joined the company from his position as Xiaomi’s Global VP earlier this year.

https://twitter.com/hbarra/status/905254383000178688

Van Dyck has worked as Facebook’s VP of Marketing for over 5 years, and previously held leading marketing roles at Apple, Nike, and Levi’s.

The official announcement of Van Dyck’s new role comes one day after the end of ‘Summer of Rift Sale’, which saw the Rift + Touch controller bundle slashed from $600 to a temporary price of $400. While timing could be either purposeful or coincidental, hiring a new CMO could mean a forthcoming ramp-up in marketing activities, making way for holiday season deals, or even getting a strategy in place for the release of new products and content.

Oculus’ previous CMO, Elizabeth Hamren, left the company in April for a spot as VP of the ‘Mixed Reality’ division at Microsoft.

We suspect more reveals will come out during Oculus Connect 4, the company’s annual developer conference taking place October 10-12. We’ll have feet on the ground, so check back then for more VR news.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Lucidfeuer

    I hope that this summer price-cut, which I hope they’ll reiterate for the fall estival period, wasn’t just a matter of marketing decision (and all the risk/results calculations going with it), otherwise wtf were they doing?

    Also I never found out, but if Hugo Barra was responsible for the Xiaomi Mix before departing for Oculus, I have hope he’ll help conceive the CV2 in ways that makes pragmatic and practical sense.