Steve Swasey, VP of corporate communications for Netflix in five years with the DVD-by-mail and video-streaming company, has stepped down after two personnel moves in its PR unit this year.
Netflix in January named senior VP Jonathan Friedland its chief communications officer a year after he joined from Disney. The company also hired A&R Edelman vet Nada Antoun as global communications manager in January from Bare Escentuals, where she was PR manager.
Those moves capped a rocky marketing and PR year in 2011 which included a poorly received price change rolled out by CEO Reed Hastings and ended with the ouster of chief marketing officer Jessie Becker.
Swasey, a Ketchum and Edelman alum, joined Netflix in 2005 from PeopleSoft, leading communications until Friedland joined in 2011 and serving as its corporate spokesman.
Netflix may have turned a PR corner by at least one measure as analytics company Forsee reported last week that Netflix customers are happier than they were at the end of last year. “Despite the increase, Netflix is still obviously paying the price of its PR fiasco last year and it is nowhere near its all-time high score of 87 two years ago,” Forsee CEO Larry Freed told Fortune May 11.
The company also faces a slow-down in subscriptions and posted its first loss in seven years in the first quarter.