Thales : appoints Pierre Schaeffer as Chief Marketing Officer
September 16, 2014 at 01:22 pm IST
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Pierre Schaeffer has been appointed Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, for the Thales Group. An accomplished marketing professional with an international background, Schaeffer will be responsible for all Thales marketing operations, reporting to Pascale Sourisse, Thales Senior Executive Vice President.
As the Thales Group expands its international business, Pierre Schaeffer's responsibilities will include developing a product policy to meet the needs of fast-growing markets around the world.
Throughout his career, Pierre Schaeffer has designed and implemented successful strategies to capture new growth opportunities in a range of high-tech industries.
He began his career at Apple in 1989 and later served as regional director for Apple Europe's publishing, entertainment and new media business. In 1997, he joined Eastman Kodak, where he developed and led the marketing strategy for the consumer digital business for eight years. In 2009, Pierre Schaeffer was appointed Vice President, Marketing, for the Michelin Group, where he drove a global transformation in the tyre maker's marketing model to accelerate growth from emerging markets and services.
In 2011, Pierre Schaeffer founded Marketect LLC, an international management consulting practice based in the Washington DC area, helping companies successfully harness innovation, find market leverage and deliver growth.
Pierre Schaeffer graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de Paris (ESPCI) and received a post-graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence from Paris VII University. He followed Apple's Executive MBA programme at the INSEAD business school near Paris.
Thales is one of the European leaders in manufacturing and marketing of electronic equipment and systems for the defense and security, aerospace, and transportation sectors. Net sales break down by product group as follows:
- defense and security systems (53.4%): C4I defense and security systems (control and monitoring systems, communication, protection, cyber-security, and other systems), defense mission systems, naval systems, electronic war systems, drones, air operation systems (air defense, air surveillance), ground defense systems and missiles;
- aerospace systems (28.4%): avionics equipment (cockpit, cabin multimedia, and simulation equipment), space systems (satellites, payloads, etc.);
- digital identification and security solutions (18.2%).
Besides, the group owns a 35% stake in Naval Group (manufacture of naval equipment for defense and nuclear energy sectors).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (29.5%), the United Kingdom (6.6%), Europe (24.8%), the United States and Canada (14%), Asia (9.4%), Near and Middle East (6%), Australia and New Zealand (4.4%) and other (5.3%).