Twitter confirms American Express exec Leslie Berland as CMO

Welcoming @leslieberland to Twitter! She will join as our CMO to help tell the stories of our iconic product!

— Jack (@jack) January 26, 2016

Most recently executive vice-president of global advertising, marketing and digital partnerships at American Express, Berland now has the tough task of helping the troubled social network galvanise user growth, which slowed to a crawl in the last six months of 2015.

In the third quarter of the year alone, Twitter reported a loss of $132m on $569m in revenue, falling short of analysts’ expectations and only managed to attract four million users from the previous quarter to bring its active count up to 320 million.

Berland will take over the running of the social network's marketing department from chief financial officer Anthony Noto, who has been overseeing marketing on an interim basis since mid-2015.

Her appointment follows a string of high profile departures from Twitter's board which were announced on Sunday (24 January), including that of Katie Jacobs Stanton, the platform's head of global media who said she had decided to resign to spend more time with her family.

Today's new hire signals a leap towards a strategy the company outlined months ago, in which it said it wanted to recruit a chief marketing officer to convert its already "enormous" brand awareness (95 per cent across its key markets) into actual users.

At the time, Noto said Twitter was looking to launch an integrated marketing campaign to help tackle the problem "before the end of 2015," but the promised "deep dive" into the issues holding back Twitter's expansion appears to have taken much longer than expected. Commenting on her appointment, Berland said she wants "to bring to life the power, uniqueness and magic of Twitter."

Thanks @Jack! Excited to join you and the amazing teams to bring to life the power, uniqueness and magic of Twitter! https://t.co/cjlVcCtMjs — Leslie Berland (@leslieberland) January 26, 2016