May 7, 2014: Katie Cotton, the fearsome, much-admired head of Apple’s worldwide publicity machine, steps down from her VP post after 18 years with the company.
During her stint at Apple, Cotton worked in lockstep with Steve Jobs and proved instrumental in controlling the company’s portrayal in the press. Her departure provides one more reminder that the Jobs era is over at Apple.
Apple’s VP of communications is stepping away from the company after leading Apple’s public relations efforts for the last five years.
Steve Dowling, who worked at Apple for 16 years, sent out a memo to staff saying that now is the time for him to step away from the company. The news comes right after Apple’s biggest PR week of the year, the fall iPhone keynote, but Dowling’s note to employees is full of optimism for the iPhone-maker.
Natatlie Kerris has been one of the most prominent figures on Apple’s PR team for the past decade, but today she announced that she’s ready to jettison from the mothership.
In a message posted on Twitter today, Kerris says she’s stepping away from Apple after working at the company for the past 14 years. The former PR director hasn’t said what she’ll be doing next, but based on the Steve Jobs quote she shared in her tweet, she’ll be moving on to a new adventure soon.
Apple’s is continuing to make big changes in the friendlier post-Kate Cotton PR era with the announcement today that Chris Breen, the long-time senior editor at Macworld, has been hired by the fruit-flavored tech company.
Breen has worked at both Macworld and MacUser, but is making the change to working at the mothership after decades of covering the company as an Apple journalist.
Apple has been looking a lot friendlier ever since its PR boss Katie Cotton left the company last May, and even though no one has been tapped to fill her vacancy yet, Cupertino might be looking to make a huge splash by tapping President Obama’s former press secretary for the post.
OMG y’all, it’s CultCast time. This week we bring to thee some more cool iOS 8 features you didn’t hear about at WWDC, plus we’ll tell you all about the new time-lapse video feature we’ve been playing with. Then, with rumors swirling that fall will bring us an iWatch, we have to wonder what features and price point would make us want one adorning our wrists. All that plus Apple’s marketing arm gets major renovations, and in honor of this week’s E3, we say why Nintendo absolutely needs to bring Mario to iOS to survive!
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Now that Katie Cotton, Apple’s longtime head of corporate communication, has retired, Tim Cook is on the hunt for a “friendly, more approachable” face to head its PR going forward.
According to Re/code, Apple is looking outside the company for high-profile candidates to fill Cotton’s role. Depending on who replaces her, Apple’s relationship with the media could begin to warm up considerably.
This time on The CultCast: No, those rumored new EarPods won’t measure your pulse. Last week’s biggest Apple rumor was a fake made up by a guy on a toilet! Plus, why you shouldn’t expect new hardware at June’s WWDC; iPhone warns you when the NSA wants you for drug trafficking; Apple’s newest executive gets a HUGE payday; Katie Cotton, Apple’s long time PR lead and Steve Jobs confidant, calls it quits; Cupertino will take on Samsung with more Guerrilla-style marketing; and since you asked, we reveal the jobs we’ve always wanted on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Have a few LOLs while we catch you up on each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!
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Katie Cotton, the woman in charge of Apple’s worldwide corporate communications is undocking from the mothership after nearly two decades of service at Apple, according to a report from Re/code.
Cotton has been one of Apple’s top ranking female VPs since joining the company 18 years ago and has been crucial in shaping the media narrative around pretty much every product from the iPod to the iPad.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling had the following to say about Cotton’s departure:
When it comes to emoji, Apple supports everything from a smiling pile of feces to intricately detailed sunset landscapes. But if you’re looking for racial diversity there’s not a black person to be found and we’re not sure if the dude with the thick mustache is supposed to be latino, but if you scroll through the collection you’ll get the point.
The lack of racial diversity in emojis was not lost on MTV Act’s Joey Parker who decided to email Tim Cook about the controversy and was surprised to get a response the next day about Apple’s efforts to make emoji more diverse.
Here’s what Apple PR Queen Katie Cotton had to say about the emoji controversy:
