GM Will "Look Outside" for New Buick Marketing Maven
Now that former Susan Docherty has been elevated to the nationalized automaker’s top marketing slot, the ever-churlish independent press (guilty as charged) has focused on the fact that the former Buick-Pontiac-GMC marketing chief is a GM lifer—in a company with a sworn dedication to change its cancerous culture. Only hours after hinting that he’d consider a non-GM exec for marketing jefe, fellow GM lifer and current CEO Fritz Henderson gave Docherty the nod and said this about that: “Whoever replaced LaNeve needed to come from inside GM because the dealership network and sales role is complicated and would be difficult for an outsider to learn.” Hubris meets the Peter Principle on the taxpayer’s dime. Nice. So . . . what’s this, then, from the GM press release announcing Docherty’s ascension? “GM will look outside to fill the Buick-GMC general manager position. ‘This will infuse new ideas and an outside perspective into our marketing efforts,’ Henderson said.” So what’s good enough for Buick-GMC isn’t good enough for the corporate mothership? Never mind singing from the same page; GM’s management is so out of tune it makes caterwauling cats seem like the The Philippine Madrigal Singers, only nowhere near as exotic.
More by Robert Farago
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"sunny slopes of exotic Flint, Michigan" LMAO reminds me of the Chevy Bowtie of Chevy in the Hole sitting on top of the hill on the horizon as I walked on - OMG - Chevrolet Ave!!! oh yeah, and my older brother's '70 ish Buick Riviera
None of this makes any difference. I am the person Buick is going after, and the last one I wanted was a '69 Riviera. Well, wait a minute. I got laid in my dad's '71 Electra, so I liked that one, and there's a '60 Electra on eBay that sort of interests me. AND THAT IS IT.
So LaNeve gets canned, presumably because GM sales have tanked without respite, and his successor is the person who engineered the stunning sales revival of -- Buick and GMC? And the brand they just killed, Pontiac? LaNeve is the fall guy - deserved or not deserved, he's still the fall guy. The proof is in the replacement - a woman of no particular credential, pliable and compliant, but a woman, nonetheless. Ms. Pellosi - who recently promised to gin up the federal treasury for more GM dollars when inevitably needed - undoubtedly approves. Government Motors can do no less than please its masters. After all, why worry about selling cars when you can instead simply sell a few Democrats? Wonder what Fritz will do when the government decides it wants the company run by a lesbian Hispanic female illegal immigrant living with Barney Frank?
@ Packard Wow, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and with bonus points for immigrant and democrat bashing in the same post...you win the 'King Douche' award of the day. Hey dinosaur, it was (mostly) a bunch of straight, white, anti-progress/ anti-government regulation, blowhard men such as yourself who ran the company into the ground in the first place...please crawl back under your rock, and/or get in your "Packard time machine" and go back to a time when crap like your post would go unchallenged. Those days are over.