GM chief marketing officer to step down

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) -General Motors said on Tuesday its global chief marketing officer Deborah Wahl had decided to retire effective March 31.

The Detroit automaker is one of the largest U.S. advertisers spending $3.3 billion in 2021 on advertising and promotions, according to its annual report. Wahl, a former chief marketing officer at McDonalds who held marketing jobs at a number of automakers, assumed her current role at GM in 2019.

GM, which has vowed to end the sale of gasoline-powered models by 2035, has focused much of its advertising on mass marketing electric vehicles under the “EVs for Everyone” campaign.

Last week, GM announced it was offering buyouts to most of its U.S. salaried employees and executives and would take a pre-tax charge of up to $1.5 billion. Last month, it also cut several hundred executive and salaried jobs.

GM said Tuesday would conduct an external search for a new global chief marketing officer. During the pandemic, GM cut its marketing budget by $1 billion from $3.7 billion in 2019 to $2.7 billion in 2020.

The U.S. automaker said in January it planned to reduce $2 billion in structural costs over the next two years including “decreasing discretionary spending across substantially all parts of the company.”

(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Marguerita Choy)