GM Grabs Another Hyundai Marketing Alum

GM Grabs Another Hyundai Marketing Alum

By Bill Visnic August 19, 2010

General Motors Co., seemingly anxious to nurture its rebound in the U.S. market and in the eyes of still-cautious consumers, announced today it has hired Chris Perry to be vice-president of marketing for the Chevrolet brand.

  Perry, was vice president of marketing for Hyundai Motor America and will report to U.S. vice president of marketing Joel Ewanick, who before joining GM earlier this year also was a fixture of surging Hyundai's marketing operations, serving in the same role Perry now vacates to join GM.

On the way out after a brief stint as Chevrolet's head marketer is Jim Campbell, who will become vice-president of marketing for GM's Performance Vehicles and Motorsports unit.

Move The Metal

Both Perry and Ewanick was instrumental in Hyundai's strong surge in the U.S. market and are credited as architects of the company's seminal "Hyundai Assurance" program that allows consumers to return a recently purchased Hyundai if they experience a life-changing event such as a job loss. The program connected with recession-addled consumers and is given credit for some of Hyundai's 40-percent increase in market share in 2009.

    With Perry now at the helm of GM's most important of its four remaining brands and Ewanick guiding GM's broad marketing direction, the mandate - as GM moves towards its fall initial public offering of stock and a return to public ownership - clearly is to do for the "new" GM what both executives seemed adept at doing for Hyundai: move the metal.

Perry "brings 25 years of marketing experience - more than 20 years in the automotive industry - to the Chevrolet marketing position," Ewanick said in a statement today. "I have worked with Chris in the past and know he will use his unique ability to integrate strategic and creative marketing activities across all communications disciplines to reconnect consumers to the Chevrolet brand."

Prior to joining Hyundai, Perry spent a decade in marketing and advertising at American Isuzu Motors.

 

Photo of Chris Perry by GM

Chevrolet sales and market share, Dec. 2009 to July 2010 by Edmunds.com/Ivan Drury 

Bill Visnic:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter