Ford has become the latest car manufacturer to draw high-level employees away from Apple, with marketing executive Musa Tariq appointed as a vice president and chief brand officer of the major automobile producer. He’ll go to work there on Jan. 30. In this new role, Tariq is responsible for further building and differentiating the company’s Ford brand.
Apple hired Tariq — a “social media whiz” who previously worked under Apple Stores chief Angela Ahrendts at Burberry — in August 2014 as the retail division’s new digital marketing director.
Before Tariq’s new role at Apple, he had worked alongside Ahrendts at Burberry to grow the luxury brand through campaigns such as Tweettalks, which shared backstage images of outfits at the London Fashion Show before they hit the runway. At Nike, Tariq took lead on an ad campaign featuring several videos with athletes describing a new shoe while censoring the actual design.
Yesterday, Daring Fireball noted that Bas Ording, a former user interface designer at Apple, is now at Tesla. He worked for the Cupertino, California-based company for 15 years.
Ording say he left Apple because he was tired of having to appear in court.
“Because my name is listed on patents, I increasingly had to appear in court cases versus HTC and Samsung,” he said, “That started to annoy me. I spent more time in court than designing. Aside from that, I missed the interaction with Steve Jobs. We discussed matters every fourteen days.”
