- General Motors announced it named Deborah Wahl as the chief of global marketing. Before this role, Wahl was the marketing chief for the Cadillac brand.
General Motors has announced that it named Deborah Wahl as the chief of global marketing. Prior to this role, Wahl was the marketing chief for the Cadillac brand at GM. The position as the chief of global marketing has been vacant since 2012.
Before running the head of marketing at Cadillac, Wahl had spent 3 years working as the CMO of McDonald’s USA. Plus she also worked as the CMO at Chrysler (2007-2008) and PulteGroup (2009-2014). And she also had a variety of marketing executive roles at Ford, Mazda, and Toyota.
GM CEO Mary Barra made the announcement in an a recent internal memo. GM’s previous CMO was Joel Ewanick. Former GM CEO Dan Akerson had fired Ewanick shortly after it was announced that the automaker was sponsoring the Manchester United professional football club for a reported $600 million.
After Ewanick was fired, Timothy Mahoney oversaw the marketing responsibilities. Mahoney retired from GM on March 1.
Wahl is going to report to GM of the Americas EVP & president Barry Engle. And the marketing heads at Chevy, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, OnStar, and GM Financial are going to jointly report to Wahl and the heads of their business units.
Melissa Grady, the director of Cadillac media and performance marketing, is going to be succeeding Wahl as Cadillac CMO. Plus Travis Hester is going to be promoted from president and managing director at GM Canada to global vice president of customer experience. Hester is going to report to Engle and GM president Mark Reuss. Scott Bell — the vice president of sales, service and marketing for GM Canada — is going to replace Hester as president of GM Canada. Sandor Piszar — the director of Chevrolet marketing — is succeeding Bell.
