Updated
As expected, there has been a management upheaval at General Motors today. The biggest change is the separation of sales and marketing leadership for each of the brands. Each brand will have a sales vice president reporting to GM North America President Mark Reuss and a separate marketing VP reporting to Susan Docherty, now the VP of U.S. marketing, who of course also reports to Reuss. Formerly, Docherty was in charge of marketing and sales.
"The premise of the structure is simple," Reuss said, "a clearer marketing focus to sell more vehicles, and freeing our sales and service experts to focus on customers and dealers."
As we reported earlier, Bryan Nesbitt loses his post as Cadillac general manager and will move back to Europe to lead design efforts there. He is succeeded by Kurt McNeil, previously a general sales manager at Chevrolet. Meanwhile, Don Butler (pictured above left petting horse) will return from the vehicle traffic monitoring company INRIX to head up Cadillac marketing. He's a GM veteran who formerly led OnStar, and uh, at one point he was a product manager for the Pontiac Aztek.
More interesting is the appointment of Alan Batey (pictured above right looking pleased) to lead Chevrolet sales and service. Batey's most recent position at GM was as president and managing director of Holden in Australia. No doubt his appointment will fuel more rumors about the reincarnation of the Pontiac G8 as a Chevrolet. Jim Campbell will lead Chevrolet marketing, in what will apparently be a slimmed down role -- he had been serving as Chevrolet brand general manager since his appointment back in December.
Finally, Brian Sweeney will stick with Buick-GMC as that two-in-one-brand's vice president of sales and service, while John Schwegman, formerly a marketing director at Chevrolet, handles marketing.
Another major development is the appointment of Chris Preuss, up until now GM's vice president of communications, to lead the OnStar telematics division. He'll report directly to Reuss. However, unless GM is planning to release some ground-breaking new technology for OnStar and/or has a plan to take on Ford's Sync, this does not appear to a promotion for Preuss.
To help us all get a handle on all the changes, GM has released an new organizational chart for its management structure. It's after the jump.
IL News: GM Shakes Up Sales and Marketing: Nesbitt Out at Cadillac
stovt001 says:
12:19 PM, 03/ 2/10
Seems a little executive heavy. It will be interesting to see how this works out for them. The main bit of good news here seems to be the suggestion of the Chevrolet G8 model revival.
firstwagon says:
12:39 PM, 03/ 2/10
Still seems to me to be endless reshuffling of the same deck of cards.
throwback says:
01:20 PM, 03/ 2/10
So, no one has overall responsibility for each of the four brands? I think Marchionne has the better idea, 1 brand leader with overal responsibility for sales, service and marketing. Each leader of those groups report to the brand Manager. I am having less and less faith that GM will make it. How often are you going to change the management structure? Maybe the problem is not the structure, but the same old managers.
alman08 says:
07:01 PM, 03/ 2/10
get rid of the CEO would be a great start