Dell hires first-ever Chief Marketing Officer

Dell's loading of its executive roster just in the last six months has been a pageant of sorts, a "who's who" of the tech and manufacturing world if you will. Former execs with Solectron, Motorola, AMR Airlines and now Oracle have all joined Dell Inc.'s (NASDAQ: DELL) ranks as the world's second-largest computer manufactures tries to fight back from a very depressing 2006 and regain some semblance of growth and profit levels.

Mark Jarvis, former Chief Marketing Officer at Oracle Corp., has joined Dell in the same capacity -- a first for the company. It says quite a bit that Dell has never had a Chief Marketing Officer, but it's not surprising. Dell has operated in a cost-crucial commodity business for so long that it really didn't need a marketing leader. Even its servers, storage and printing businesses operated in a commodity fashion. You don't need to market in that universe in most cases.

But these are different times. Competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) has beaten Dell soundly in the retail consumer market in physical stores (where Dell does not even exist). Also, Dell's recent acquisition of Alienware (high-end PCs) needs a marketing push. If Dell wants to sell more high-margin goods and less of the boring-box and low-margin PC, where competitors have erased Dell's direct manufacturing advantage, it needs to focus on marketing. Will Jarvis put some "oomph" into what the business and consumer markets expect from Dell? It won't move away from the commodity business just yet, but it's all about branding and marketing in that arena -- it's not about the same product you can get from a dozen other manufacturers.