GM is looking for a new Global Marketing Director, per recent statements made by General Motors CEO Mary Barra. GM’s former Global Marketing Chief, Deborah Wahl, retired in March. Since then, GM has conducted an external search for a replacement.
Former GM Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl
Wahl left General Motors after being promoted to GM Global CMO in 2019, taking the position left vacant since the departure of Joel Ewanick in 2012. Prior to her promotion to GM Global CMO, Wahl served as Cadillac Chief Marketing Officer since March of 2018. Before signing on with General Motors, Wahl also served as CMO at McDonald’s USA and Chrysler, as well as serving various roles at Toyota, Lexus, and Ford. She has recently been elected to the Board of event management company Beyond Ordinary Events.
According to a recent report from Detroit Free Press, GM CEO Barra addressed vacancy, stating that a search for a replacement is still ongoing. Barra also stated that GM was considering restarting advertising on Twitter, saying “we’re in the process of reimagining marketing. We are in the market to bring in a new head of marketing. I think that’s a good question [regarding Twitter advertising] and will be one of my first questions when this new person joins the GM team, so, I definitely think it’s possible.”
The official GM Twitter account (@GM) recently made its first tweet in eight months after being inactive on the platform since October 27th, 2022. The inactivity coincided with an announcement that GM would halt ad spending on Twitter following purchase of the social media platform by Elon Musk.
“As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising,” GM told CNBC in an emailed statement last year. “Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue.”
The recent Tweet announced a partnership between GM and Musk’s all-electric vehicle company, Tesla, to allow GM customers access to the Tesla Supercharger Network. Access will open up early next year.
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Comments
very easy to be found… sure GM and other car makers receive 1 million Resumes daily and good ones
Don’t hire the Bud Light chick, I heard she might be looking.
Carl: That’s the Bud Lite converted dude.
Lol
Pressure cooker job. This position gets the blame game for the failure of others. You need a person with lots of gray hairs, that can drink a quart of whiskey a day, that has been beat up in this business for 40 years and can walk on water and chew gum at the same time. Hopefully before they buried Ioccoca they saved some of his DNA for cloning. You don’t need a person pictured on the front cover of Glamour magazine. The uglier and tougher looking the better.
On the gray quart 40:
That’s what happens if they do the job the right way. Unfortunately, Mary will pick another non-car woman -just because she’s a woman. Sad.
Robert: Your call is spot on! Stay tuned…
USA 1 …Spot on!
You can judge a person’s real asset value by looking at their hair, face and body. The slightly beat or beat look with gray hair and some creases in the face is what you want in a high level hire. These candidares have experienced many lessons learned. You don’t want a Cover Girl or someone pictured on the cover of Men’s Health. Look at the features of seasoned senior Asian and German auto executives. They have all been through the fire and survived. Example the senior execs at Toyota and Honda.
If GM really wanted to get serious about this position – they’d bring someone in from the outside with automotive marketing chops and give them 18 to 24 months to shake things up and turn things around. Oh, and a level of autonomy like: answerable only to Mary or Mark. Unfortunately, it will probably never happen. 1.) GM management has overseen some of the best vehicle engineering and production engineering in the world, but they have little understanding of marketing. That’s why their image is where it is no matter what they build. Can you imagine how Ford would be marketing the C8 Corvette if they designed and built such an amazing vehicle at that price point? 2.) They have no respect for, or little use for marketing to begin with. Present management didn’t even FILL the marketing director’s position from 2012 to 2019
( ! ) They still seem to still believe the old axiom, “If we build it they will come”. That kind of ‘old GM not new GM’ thinking has taken them down to their present day market share.
One can argue that Tesla has seen incredible growth without any advertising. True. But what is Elon Musk’s greatest strength? He is a superb MARKETER first. “Looky here, folks! I’m selling the future! The car is electric! The car drives itself!”
Never mind that he used his customers for beta testing the self driving thing that killed a few of them. Never mind that his quality control was right out of the Yugo playbook at first. He marketed to the influencers and Wall Street and built a bullet- proof image that reality could not dent. Ask yourself what would happen to GM if they tried to pull the stuff Tesla did with their customers. Marketing is the third leg on the success stool in this business. GM just doesn’t seem to get it.
The preferred pedigree for an upper level executive position in an American corporation these days is a good looking female, liberal, gay, and of color.