By Chris Nicholls
SYDNEY: Microsoft has appointed a former Nestle sales executive as their new Entertainment and Devices Division sales director for Australia and New Zealand.
Sean Davis, who worked at Nestle for the past seven years and has been in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry for 15 years, will take on retail sales responsibility for all Microsoft consumer products, focussing on Xbox, Windows and computer peripherals areas. He will report to regional director David Mclean.
Davis said he moved to take up a new challenge.
“I’d been in what they call the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) industry since I graduated from university, and I wanted to really venture and try something new. It was so appealing because of the way they look after their people, the training, the brand, the sheer size [of the company]. When the opportunity came up, [it was] just too good to refuse.
“All my background in food was in highly competitive, commodity-driven markets, so for me to be in a category that has competitors such as Sony, Nintendo, Logitech, it’s something that I’m used to. We’re seeing that now with what’s happening in the next-gen total category itself.”
He welcomed the competition in the marketplace currently and said it helped the market.
“What Sony and Nintendo are doing is making us make sure we understand our retail strategy and our execution and what we’re doing is driving them as well, so it’s a great thing for the industry and the category.”
He said he would continue to push the Xbox’s value message to consumers, try to improve the console’s in-store floor space area and work to generate more sales from the consoles already installed in stores.
Davis said his second message was that Microsoft would be the “home of gaming”, as he put it, with Grand Theft Auto 4 arriving next year for the first time on the system along with other ‘immersive’ games such as Rock Band.