General Motors Global Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl is leaving the automaker. A spokeswoman for GM confirmed to Ad Age that Wahl announced her retirement today.

Wahl “elected to retire” and “will be transitioning through March 31, 2023,” the GM representative said, adding: “We appreciate Deborah’s contributions since joining GM in 2018 and wish her well in her next chapter. We will conduct an external search for a new Global Chief Marketing Officer.”

Wahl joined GM in March 2018 as CMO of its Cadillac brand and was promoted to global GM CMO in 2019. She had previously served as CMO of McDonald’s USA.

GM did not make Wahl available for interviews.

The sudden announcement comes as GM deals with rapid change in the automotive industry—including massive investments in electric vehicles—while it also manages changing economic conditions such as rising interest rates that have led to a softening sales environment.

The owner of Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC reported record pre-tax profits in 2022, but it has also made cost-cutting moves. In late January GM announced a two-year, $2 billion plan that has included job cuts and buyouts. A GM representative told Automotive News earlier this month that “by permanently bringing down structured costs, we can improve vehicle profitability and remain nimble in an increasingly competitive market.”

Wahl is a veteran auto marketer, having held brand strategy, communications and marketing roles with Ford, Toyota, Mazda and Chrysler during her career. When GM CEO Mary Barra promoted her to the global CMO role in late 2019, she became the first person to hold that title at the automaker since 2012.  Barra at the time positioned the move as “aligning marketing across GM under Deborah's leadership,” which she said would “build stronger brands while ensuring more effective, efficient and agile customer engagement.”

During her tenure at GM, Wahl kept the automaker's agency roster largely intact, with Interpublic’s Commonwealth/McCann handling Chevrolet creative and Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett on Cadillac. Dentsu’s Carat handles media.

Wahl was a strong advocate for Super Bowl advertising—GM this year ran a co-branded spot with Netflix that plugged the automaker’s deal to put its EVs in Netflix shows. GM reported spending $4 billion on advertising and promotion in 2022, up from $3.3 billion in 2021. 

Corporate leadership

Wahl in October was added to GM’s 18-person corporate leadership team, adding the senior VP moniker to her CMO title—making her exit some five months later somewhat surprising.

But GM is also being steered by some new members of its board of directors, who are known to take a keen interest in the automaker’s marketing direction, according to a person familiar with the matter. The current board has “a very different tenor from previous orientations,” said this person. 

New board members include Jonathan McNeill, co-founder and CEO of venture firm DVx Ventures. McNeill, who was appointed in October, is a former chief operating officer at Lyft and former president of global sales, delivery and service at electric vehicle leader Tesla. Also joining the board last year was Joanne Crevoiserat, CEO of Tapestry, whose brands include Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman. Members added in 2021 included Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and co-CEO of software firm Workday.

Whether or not the board pushes GM to hire its next CMO from outside the auto industry remains to be seen. But that is a real possibility, suggested Dean Evans, a former executive at Cars.com and former CMO at  Hyundai and Subaru. As automakers embrace electric vehicles and new ways of shopping online, “all of that forces this conversation on [hiring] a marketing person that's outside of the industry,” he said, suggesting the mindset of corporate leaders is, “while we've been sitting here in an archaic industry that needs to move forward, why would we put a retread into that?”

But outsiders don’t have a great track record in automotive CMO jobs, he added. Ford, for instance, in early 2021 recruited eBay executive Suzy Deering as its CMO, but she parted ways with the automaker in late 2022, and Ford is still looking for a new CMO. Outsiders “have a hard time understanding that you’ve got to be a dealer advocate and the advocate of the brand CFO, while triangulating the sales chief. Those are the orchestrations that, coming from outside, probably [takes] too long to learn,” Evans said.

Automotive News contributed to this story.