Target hires Hilton's Mark Weinstein as chief marketing and guest experience officer

Target has appointed Mark Weinstein as chief marketing and guest experience officer, filling a role it created in February and has been recruiting for externally ever since.

Weinstein starts immediately and reports to chief executive Michael Fiddelke. He arrives from Hilton, where he was global chief marketing officer across the group's 28 brands and its Hilton Honors loyalty programme, and also headed its luxury brands.

His remit at Target runs wider than marketing. Alongside brand and guest experience across discovery, shopping and cultural presence, he takes responsibility for Roundel, the retailer's retail media network, and Target+, its curated third-party marketplace. Both are margin-accretive businesses that sit outside conventional marketing ownership.

"As we continue writing the next chapter at Target, deepening how we know and engage our guests will be critical to our success," Fiddelke said. "Mark has a proven ability to understand what consumers value and turn those insights into brand connections that feel relevant and personal."

Weinstein said the retailer had "the rare ability to be both deeply familiar and continually surprising", adding: "We have an enormous opportunity to bring the brand to life across every interaction with consumers, creating experiences that feel unmistakably Target while giving people new reasons to engage with, choose and prefer us."

The last seat at the table

The appointment closes out a leadership rebuild Fiddelke began within days of taking over from Brian Cornell in February. That reshuffle moved Cara Sylvester from chief guest experience officer to chief merchandising officer and Lisa Roath from food and essentials to chief operating officer, saw chief commercial officer Rick Gomez depart and merchandising chief Jill Sando retire, and launched an external search for a combined guest experience and marketing role. Weinstein is the result of that search, and the only outside hire among the four.

He joins at a better moment than the one Fiddelke inherited. Target had posted three consecutive years of declining comparable sales, weighed down by discretionary categories that account for close to a third of annual revenue, and by consumer backlash over changes to its diversity policies. The company also cut about 1,800 corporate roles in October 2025.

Performance has since turned. Target reported a 6.7 percent rise in net sales to 25.4 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2026, with digital comparable sales up 8.9 percent, and raised full-year net sales growth guidance to around 4 percent. Comparable sales rose 2.7 percent in the quarter ended in August, with food and beverage up 7.2 percent. Fiddelke has described home and apparel as a multi-year repair job.