Kopp

Tim Kopp is leaving Coke, where he has served as VP-global interactive marketing, to join WebTrends at the end of the month as the company's chief marketing officer. Kopp was with Coke for less than two years, having come from Procter & Gamble, where he headed up interactive marketing for the global beauty-care division, Ad Age writes. Prior to that, most of his experience was in the financial sector, where he worked for a regional bank on client IPOs, stock splits, and mergers and acquisitions.

Kopp may be best known for convincing Coke to embrace the Mentos-Diet Coke geyser video phenomenon by sponsoring video contests at EepyBird.com, the founders of which produced the first Mentos/Coke videos.

Kopp's defection is indicative of a trend: Interactive marketing veterans at established, publicly traded companies have been going to online rising stars, no doubt lured in part by the potential payouts in the case of an acquisition or IPO.