Chrysler's new marketing chief says the chance to turn around an American icon was an irresistible — and, some say, nearly impossible — challenge that lured her away from Toyota.
“The chance to really work and develop and expand those brands and take them to the next level is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Deborah Wahl Meyer told The Associated Press on Friday as she began her second month on the job at Chrysler LLC. “You don't have many of those chances in your career.”
Meyer, the daughter of a former Chrysler plant manager, is one of the most high-profile new hires at Chrysler, which has been a private company in the hands of Cerberus Capital Management LP since its split from DaimlerChrysler AG in August.
Meyer's former boss at Toyota Motor Corp., Jim Press, also made the jump to Chrysler, where he is now a vice chairman overseeing sales and marketing. Cerberus also lured Robert Nardelli, the former chairman of Home Depot Inc., to be the automaker's new chairman and chief executive. The company hasn't released details on executive compensation but has said it will be performance-based.
Meyer said Press and Nardelli are encouraging her to experiment freely with new media. She's looking into programs that let companies target their television advertising by ZIP code. Chrysler already targets Internet ads based on potential customers' Yahoo searches, she said, but she wants to take what the company learns to the local level so dealers can beef up their own efforts to target customers.
“We're going to be embracing all those capabilities,” she said.
Meyer said she wants to build on Chrysler's success in winning over black and Hispanic buyers and use what the company has learned to go after younger customers. She also wants to get a deeper understanding of Chrysler's core buyers.
“As a marketer, the challenge is phenomenal,” Meyer said. “Chrysler's been through a lot of different phases, and has had incredible success, and with the way the company's structured now it's an opportunity to put into play all the things that we know we can do to make it strong.”
Some industry watchers say Meyer's task will be difficult. Meyer did good work at Toyota and helped lift its Lexus brand into the highest luxury tier, said Dan Gorrell of AutoStratagem, a Tustin, Calif.-based consulting company. But Chrysler's brands have been hurt by heavy incentive spending and quality problems, and they have much lower consumer acceptance than Toyota's brands.
“Marketing is under the gun,” Gorrell said. “It is expected to pull off miracles and it really can't.”
Meyer, 44, is no stranger to challenges. After earning her Master of Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, the Detroit-area native headed to W.L. Gore and Associates in Paris, where she marketed a product for people allergic to dust mites. France has around 20,000 independent pharmacies, Meyer said, and she had to come up with a strategy to reach them all.
After returning to the United States, she took a job with Ford Motor Co. and launched new marketing programs that aided Ford's meteoric rise in Brazil and helped Mazda retool its image as a sporty brand.
Meyer joined Toyota six years ago, where she set up new marketing programs and launched Toyota's “Moving forward” tag line. At Lexus, Toyota's luxury division, she tried to elevate the brand's status through new media campaigns. During her tenure, Neiman Marcus featured a limited edition 2007 Lexus GS 450h hybrid in its Christmas catalog.
Chrysler's marketing efforts have been in disarray in recent years. Dodge pulled out of sponsoring the Lingerie Bowl, a 2004 Super Bowl halftime show featuring models in their underwear, after protests from dealers and women's groups. Last year, dealers revolted when the company produced too many vehicles and tried to push them into showrooms, and this year, the company was embarrassed by a European Internet ad that showed a dog being electrocuted by a Dodge Nitro sport utility vehicle.
Meyer said she has always considered Chrysler's ads to be cutting edge, even if the company has sometimes gone too far.
“Chrysler was always the scrappy brand,” she said. “As a marketer, you'd rather be at the edge than way back there.”
Gorrell said Meyer may have to contend with a tight ad budget, since the domestic automakers have little extra to spend right now. Meyer said she will have the money she needs.
“The consumer has so many messages coming at them, they're looking for a different voice to respond to,” Meyer said. “It's not so much a matter of absolute dollars, it's more the way we get at it.”
