DC Entertainment Senior Vice President – Sales and Business Development Derek Maddalena and Vice President – Marketing Carol Roeder have left the company in a restructuring of sales and marketing functions, DC Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee confirmed to ICv2.  John Cunningham, most recently DC VP Content Strategy and previously VP Marketing has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Sales and Trade Marketing.    

Trade sales and marketing, which involves selling and marketing to retailers, has reported to DiDio and Lee since 2014, Lee explained.  That year Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing Bob Wayne announced his plans to leave the company (see “Bob Wayne to leave DC”) and Maddalena was hired (see “New DC SVP Sales and Biz Dev”).  Continuing with that structure, Cunningham will report to the Co-Publishers.  Cunningham has been at DC since 2005. 

Trade sales veteran Jim Sokolowski, who joined DC as Vice President -- Comic Book Specialty & Newsstand Sales in early 2015, remains in that position.

On the consumer marketing side, Eddie Scannell, formerly Vice President Mass & Digital Sales, has been moved to Vice President of Consumer Marketing.  In that role, Scannell does not report to the Co-Pubs; consumer marketing reports to Senior Vice President - Marketing and Global Franchise Management Amit Desai. 

We asked the Co-Pubs why the changes in sales and marketing were made.  “Going back two years, it’s an acknowledgement that sales and even trade marketing activity for publishing is a very specific type of task,” Lee said. “We need to have as much alignment and coordination with what we’re doing on the editorial side as possible to have something successful.”

“But overall, I think it’s a signal that we’re leaning into what has driven our growth and that book sales, mass market book sales has been a big part of it,” Lee continued.  “John Cunningham has been a big part of it. He’s a book guy. He’s worked at book publishers before, so we’re leaning into that experience. And not just mass market books, but also with the periodical business, we lit a fire with Rebirth.  So we’re going to be more publishing-focused than years before, I would say.

The departure of Roeder marks a further thinning of the female executive management ranks at DC, which eliminated the position of Shelly Bond, Vertigo Vice President – Executive Editor earlier this year (see “Shelly Bond Out at Vertigo”), leaving Bobbi Chase the only female vice president in editorial management at the company.  Asked about female executives in other areas of the company, Lee pointed to Anne DePies, who was promoted from Vice President to Senior Vice President of Finance and Business Strategy.