Note: Toyota’s Jim Farley ended up with the Ford job. The Wilhite rumor turned out to be incorrect.
Ford has long had some of the worst marketing in the industry. Their brand identity has been broad and vague. Their product lineup has been full of overlaps and gaps. Their targetting has been somewhere between imprecise and non-existent. And their advertising has been consistently awful, with the partial exception of the campaign that launched the Focus.
Well, Ford might finally be getting the marketing talent it has long needed. Cisco Codina resigned last week. And Automotive News just reported that Steve Wilhite has resigned from Hyundai USA, and might be showing up in the top marketing job at Ford that Codina vacated.
Who is Steve Wilhite? He first made a name for himself by helping bring VW back from the dead in the U.S. As head of VW’s U.S. marketing in the late 1990s, he played a major role in the “Drivers Wanted” campaign and the launch of a new lineup spearheaded by the New Beetle. In 1998, BrandWeek named him “Marketer of the Year.”
From VW, Wilhite went to Apple in 1999, where he did not fare so well and lasted only a year or so. Whether responsible or not, he received the blame for tepid sales growth. He resigned, and Jobs took back responsibility for marketing.
After Apple Wilhite went to another job, at a healthcare firm, before ending up at Nissan USA in 2001. There he served as VP of Marketing as that brand acquired new life in the U.S. Of course, an entire new lineup of products with very competitive styling and performance was the main reason the brand came back, but the marketing hasn’t been bad. I’m personally not a fan of the _shift campaign–it’s way too conceptual–but this appears to have been championed by Ghosn and initially resisted by Wilhite.
Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was pleased with Wilhite’s achievements in the U.S., and in 2004 appointed him head of Nissan’s global marketing, with a new office in Tokyo. Reading between the lines, the iconoclastic, outspoken Wilhite probably did not fit in well at Nissan’s Tokyo HQ. In an insightful Detroit News article, he talks about improving his patience in order to work better in Tokyo.
This might explain why he left Nissan for a COO post at Hyundai USA in August 2006. In the press release he said, “I’m thrilled with the opportunity to return to Southern California.” But Hyundai has failed to meet ambitious sales goals in the U.S., and Wilhite may be taking the blame for that. In his defense, I’ve often heard that Hyundai’s Korean HQ is very difficult to work with, and gives the U.S. unit very little autonomy. So Wilhite was likely no happier there than he was at Nissan’s Tokyo HQ.
Which brings him to Ford. Or, actually, back to Ford. It seems that Wilhite began his career at Ford.
Ford could certainly use Wilhite’s best work. His strength is supposedly in crafting a strong identity for a brand, and Ford needs one. The big question is: will they give him the room to work that Hyundai did not? Will he fit in well with the Mulally-Fields team? Might Fields feel threatened by this potential replacement? Time will tell. I’m certainly looking forward to see how this one unfolds. If only I never have to see another awful ad from Ford, Wilhite will have earned every cent they pay him.