Here's one way to know your company values your marketing acumen: It offers you $60 million to stay for five years.

That's precisely the carrot Apple is now dangling in front of Philip Schiller, its 50-year-old senior VP-worldwide product marketing, in the hopes of preventing him from fleeing to a competitor.

Mr. Schiller was among a small group of senior Apple executives who were each recently granted 150,000 restricted stock units, valued at nearly $60 million, contingent on the them staying with the company for another five years. The company -- which is in the early days of operating under its new leader, Tim Cook -- is clearly digging deep into its pockets in order to stem an exodus of its senior-most talent in the wake of the death of Apple's founder, Steve Jobs.

A veteran marketer with 25 years of experience, Mr. Schiller is a member of Apple's executive team and has a big job: he's charged with overseeing the company's product-marketing and business-marketing programs and developer relations.

He now reports to Apple CEO Mr. Cook, but was incredibly loyal to the departed Mr. Jobs. They worked alongside each other for years, and Mr. Schiller even appeared onstage at times for major product launches and demos. He even left Apple when Mr. Jobs did for a period, and rejoined when Mr. Jobs returned in 1997. Since then, he's been at the forefront of developing and marketing products such as the iMac, MacBook, iPod, iPhone, Safari and Apple TV.

Before Apple, he worked for Macromedia in San Francisco, FirePower Systems, Nolan Norton & Co. and Massachusetts General Hospital. Mr. Schiller wasn't always into computers, though. He studied biology at Boston College, and per his , it seems he still follows Boston sports teams -- the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics and the Bruins. Beyond sports, he appears to be into science, cars (Porsches, Audis and Aston Martins) and rock music, including The Killers, Rush and The Dropkick Murphys.

According to ComputerWorld the share units will be awarded when they vest, and the shares will be worth their then-current price, which could be different than their current value. Half of the shares vest in the summer of 2013, and then other half in the spring of March 2016, assuming the executives are still with Apple at that time.

In addition to Mr. Schiller, others who were awarded the grants include Peter Oppenheimer, the company's chief financial officer, and senior VPs: Scott Forstall, head of the iPhone software group; Bob Mansfield, who's in charge of hardware engineering; and Jeffrey Williams, operations head who succeeded Mr. Cook in his previous role.

So if the chief marketing officer at Apple is worth over $60 million, how about Apple's CEO?

ComputerWorld noted that Mr. Cook has his options already; this summer, after taking succeeding Mr. Jobs when he stepped down, Apple awarded Mr. Cook one million shares that vest in four years, and again 10 years, worth about $399 million at Monday's stock price.