GM global marketing chief Deborah Wahl is departing

General Motors Global Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl is leaving the automaker. 

A GM representative confirmed the news, saying Wahl “elected to retire” and “will be transitioning through March 31, 2023,” adding: “We appreciate Deborah’s contributions since joining GM in 2018 and wish her well in her next chapter. We will conduct an external search for a new Global Chief Marketing Officer.”

Wahl, 60, joined GM in March 2018 as CMO of its Cadillac brand and was promoted to global GM CMO in 2019. She had previously served as CMO of McDonald’s USA.

She has been named to the Automotive News 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry list in 2000, 2005 and 2020.

Wahl’s departure is “going to be a void that’s going to be tough to fill,” said Will Churchill, dealer principal of Frank Kent Motor Co. in Texas, who also is a past Cadillac National Dealer Council chairman.

Churchill said Wahl played a significant role in advancing Cadillac’s brand image, including by crafting a marketing tone that feels more forward from a luxury perspective and by building a strong team.

“We’re higher up on the consideration scale, and a couple things play into that — the quality of product and the desirability of the product, and also the marketing,” he said. “You can’t do one without the other. It takes a team effort on all the fronts.”

Surprise news

The sudden announcement comes as GM deals with rapid change in the automotive industry — including massive investments in electric vehicles — while it also manages changing economic conditions such as rising interest rates that have led to a softening sales environment.

GM reported record pre-tax profits in 2022, but it has also made cost-cutting moves. In late January GM announced a two-year, $2 billion plan that has included job cuts and buyouts. A GM representative told Automotive News earlier this month that “by permanently bringing down structured costs, we can improve vehicle profitability and remain nimble in an increasingly competitive market.” 

Wahl is a veteran auto marketer, having held brand strategy, communications and marketing roles with Ford, Toyota, Mazda and Chrysler during her career. When GM CEO Mary Barra promoted her to the global CMO role in late 2019, she became the first person to hold that title at the automaker since 2012.  Barra at the time positioned the move as “aligning marketing across GM under Deborah’s leadership,” which she said would “build stronger brands while ensuring more effective, efficient and agile customer engagement.” 

Wahl told Automotive News in 2020 that her first automotive assignment was with Ford Motor Co. in Brazil, following a six-month post with the company in Dearborn, Mich.

In 2020, she described an industry on the cusp of major change, saying: “We’re at a true point of renaissance about the possibilities and the transformation that’s about to happen. It’s one of the reasons that I was so interested in participating with General Motors and being on that team to contribute.”

“I think we’re better as a whole, as an industry about how we go after customers, how we’re using data, how we’re using technology, speaking from the marketing chair,” she added at the time.

“The change in how we do work, how people think about doing work, how we look at transformation to me has been the most compelling. And I also believe that this period with the COVID pandemic has really accelerated all of us to think completely differently about it.”

During her tenure at GM, Wahl kept the automaker’s agency roster largely intact, with Interpublic’s Commonwealth/McCann handling Chevrolet creative and Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett on Cadillac. Dentsu’s Carat handles media.

Wahl was a strong advocate for Super Bowl advertising. Under Wahl’s leadership, GM and Netflix teamed up this year on a Super Bowl ad and campaign to feature more electric vehicles in the streaming service’s shows and films. GM reported spending $4 billion on advertising and promotion in 2022, up from $3.3 billion in 2021. 

Corporate leadership

Wahl in October was added to GM’s 18-person corporate leadership team, adding the senior vice president moniker to her CMO title — making her exit some five months later somewhat surprising.

But GM is also being steered by some new members of its board of directors, who are known to take a keen interest in the automaker’s marketing direction, according to a person familiar with the matter. The current board has “a very different tenor from previous orientations,” said this person. 

New board members include Jonathan McNeill, co-founder and CEO of venture firm DVx Ventures. McNeill, who was appointed in October, is a former chief operating officer at Lyft and former president of global sales, delivery and service at electric vehicle leader Tesla. Also joining the board last year was Joanne Crevoiserat, CEO of Tapestry, whose brands include Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Members added in 2021 included Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and co-CEO of software firm Workday.

Whether or not the board pushes GM to hire its next CMO from outside the auto industry remains to be seen. But that is a real possibility, suggested Dean Evans, a former executive at Cars.com and former CMO at  Hyundai and Subaru.

As automakers embrace EVs and new ways of shopping online, “all of that forces this conversation on [hiring] a marketing person that’s outside of the industry,” he said, suggesting the mindset of corporate leaders is, “while we’ve been sitting here in an archaic industry that needs to move forward, why would we put a retread into that?”

But outsiders don’t have a great track record in automotive CMO jobs, he added. Ford, for instance, in early 2021 recruited eBay executive Suzy Deering as its CMO, but she parted ways with the automaker in late 2022, and Ford is still looking for a new CMO. Outsiders “have a hard time understanding that you’ve got to be a dealer advocate and the advocate of the brand CFO, while triangulating the sales chief. Those are the orchestrations that, coming from outside, probably [takes] too long to learn,” Evans said.

Lindsay VanHulle of Automotive News contributed to this report.