Marissa Mayer Appoints Former Lockerz CEO & Amazon VP Kathy Savitt As Yahoo’s New CMO

While the search continues for a new top executive for Flickr, Yahoo and its new CEO have found a new chief marketing officer — and one with former operations experience. This afternoon Yahoo announced that Kathy Savitt will be joining the company as CMO on September 14th and will report directly to Marissa Mayer.

Yahoo gains significant experience at the top of its marketing arm, as Savitt has held a number of consumer, retail and tech executive positions during her career. Most recently, she was the founder and CEO of social commerce company, Lockerz, a site that now counts 45 million users.

Prior to Lockerz, Yahoo’s new CMO was executive VP and CMO of American Eagle and, before joining American Eagle, she held a number of senior leadership positions at Amazon.

“Yahoo! is at an important and unique inflection point in its storied history,” Savitt said in a statement today. “I believe passionately in Yahoo!’s ability to inspire and delight users, partners and advertisers around the world and am excited to join Marissa in defining Yahoo!’s next chapter.”

Former Yahoo CMO and EVP Elisa Steele left the company in December, after initiating a decentralization of Yahoo’s marketing department, as reported at the time by Kara Swisher. Last month, Steele jumped to Skype, becoming the company’s new CMO.

Since then, Yahoo marketing has been without an official chief, but that ended today with Mayer’s first (reported) high level appointment, and perhaps the first of many baby steps toward restoring faith in Yahoo leadership — or at least a sign of movement in that general direction.