<\/p>\n
Tim Mahoney, chief marketing officer Global Chevrolet at the Chicago Auto Show in February. (Steve Fecht \/ Chevrolet)<\/p>\n
Herd Chevrolet\u2019s sprawling product portfolio under one ad slogan. Make Chevy a global brand. Make Chevy a global brand without selling in Europe. Change brand perception after years of inconsistent product. Sell the busiest year of bowtie product launches in 102 years. And if all that isn\u2019t challenging enough for a new Chevy marketing chief. . . .<\/p>\n
Then Cobalt happens.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for GM\u2019s biggest brand, Chevy has hired one of the best marketing minds in the\u00a0business The recall gorilla in the room doesn\u2019t phase him. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity if we do it right,\u201d says the marketing man with the Midas touch. And with products like the new, road-shredding Corvette Stingray and the handsome Impala to play with, you don\u2019t doubt him. My Detroit News colleague, Melissa Burden, and I climbed the Ren Cen mountain to talk with Chevy\u2019s global marketing guru about the \u201cFind New Roads\u201d campaign, Apple, and love.<\/p>\n Q:<\/b>\u00a0How do you change Chevy\u2019s public perception?<\/p>\n Mahoney:<\/b>\u00a0Great brands are built with consistency and integration. I\u2019ll give you an example from Porsche. Porsche values rested on performance, design and exclusivity. That applied to a 911, to a Boxster, to a 356. That also applied to a Cayenne. So we\u2019re setting an expectation.<\/p>\n Q:<\/b>\u00a0How long will it take?<\/p>\n Mahoney:\u00a0<\/b>It took two years at Subaru for \u201cLove\u201d to rally grab hold. We just celebrated the first anniversary of Find New Roads in March. The beauty of Find New Roads (is) it\u2019s about possibilities. That works incredibly well in the Middle East, in South America, it works well here. We\u2019re saying American optimism and ingenuity without saying it, right? Because we\u2019re the ones as a culture who solve problems and find new roads.<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0<\/b>Most of your career has been spent at niche brands like Subaru and Porsche. How do you connect all the dots in a brand as big as Chevy?<\/p>\n Mahoney:<\/b>\u00a0You start with a brand architecture that at a ground level is about quality and value \u2014 and then at a differentiating level is a combination of design and performance technology and you start to build that into every vehicle. Corvette and Impala clearly embody what we want to be.<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0<\/b>In marketing do you ignore Switchgate or do you embrace it as an opportunity to redefine the brand?<\/p>\n Mahoney:<\/b>\u00a0Mary Barra said were going to be judged based on how we handled it, not that we had it. She tells the story that she got an email from a customer who was concerned and she picked up the phone and called them. So she really is walking the talk. And we have a chance to change the conversation with the launch of 4G later this year \u2014 we\u2019ll have the ability in the cars to connect up to seven devices. And we have to continue to build great cars because the Cruze is not the Cobalt, nor is this Impala what you rented three years ago.<\/p>\n Q:<\/b>\u00a0What have you changed?<\/p>\n Mahoney:<\/b>\u00a0The carpet tiles (laughs). I learned from the Japanese and Germans to stand back and watch for a while. As Americans we tend to react too fast and wind up having to go back and fix things. (We need to) get the balance right between the three things that go into every purchase: The emotional connection, the rational component, and the economic piece. Apple didn\u2019t launch the iPad talking about what it cost \u2014 they talked about how cool it was.<\/p>\n Q:<\/b>\u00a0What does China look like?<\/p>\n Mahoney:\u00a0<\/b>Chevy is an infant brand. But for the first time, China sales passed Brazil. In the next 8-10 years the market is going to swell to 30 million cars so there\u2019s room for Chevy. The Manchester United sponsorship will help us there because over 100 million Man-U fans live in China. As soon as we go on their shirt in September it will be like Super Bowl Sunday every week when they play in terms of the number of fans watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tim Mahoney, chief marketing officer Global Chevrolet at the Chicago Auto Show in February. (Steve Fecht \/ Chevrolet) Herd Chevrolet\u2019s sprawling product portfolio under one ad slogan. Make Chevy a global brand. Make Chevy a global brand without selling in Europe. Change brand perception after years of inconsistent product. Sell the busiest year of bowtie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14822,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14815\/revisions\/14822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/images.intellitxt.com\/ast\/adTypes\/icon1.png\")
<\/a>, Tim Mahoney. A soft-spoken hobbit with a quick sense of humor, the 57-year old Mahoney has that\u00a0Forrest Gump-like knack<\/a>\u00a0of being around some of the great marketing campaigns of the last couple decades. But unlike Gump, Mahoney\u2019s presence is no accident. A self-described marketing nerd, this 30-year automotive veteran knows his stuff. Porsche defied purists and made an SUV the best-selling Porsche ever? Mahoney was there. Subaru launched the iconic\u00a0\u201cShare the Love\u201d campaign<\/a>? Mahoney was there. VW\u2019s Darth Vader ad is the buzz of the Super Bowl? Mahoney was . . . you get the idea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n