General Motors has announced that it has replaced its head of Marketing, Susan Docherty, with Joel Ewanick. Come May 24, Ewanick will become Vice President of Marketing for GM North America and report to President of GM NA, Mark Reuss.
Most recently, Ewanick was Vice President of Marketing for Nissan North America. Before joining Nissan in March, he served as VP of Marketing for Hyundai Motors America.
“Joel is highly regarded in industry and marketing circles and his track record speaks for itself,” said Reuss. “We are very pleased to have his marketing acumen, creative leadership and energy at GM at this critical time.”
Ewanick will be GM’s single point for marketing, responsible for improving positioning of Chevy, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac as well as boosting consumer consideration of GM vehicles in the United States. The shuffle comes nearly two months after GM’s most recent executive revamp that split sales and marketing operations in an effort to speed up GM’s post-bankruptcy recovery. In that shakeup, GM appointed Steve Carlisle as head of GM’s U.S. sales and stripped Docherty of sales and service responsibilities, leaving her in charge of marketing alone.Ever since New GM’s Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre took over the company in June of last year, at least two dozen executives have been replaced. Whitacre is eager to bring some outside talent to The General and has replaced GM’s top spokesman and lobbyists with former AT&T confidants. In a letter dated March 31, Whitacre told remaining executives that he was essentially finished making changes to the executive team:
“I want to reassure you that the major leadership changes are behind us,” Whitacre wrote in a March 31 letter. “The team we have in place today is the team that will take us forward.”
Docherty will remain with General Motors in a position that will be announced soon.
In the meantime, stay tuned as we learn more about this shake up and the reason behind the decision. And be sure to tune into this week’s GM Authority Weekly podcast, where we will discuss this topic in greater detail.
No Comments yet