Lessons from Auto

Executive Q&A: Jim Moloney, General Director of Marketing
General Motors Service Parts Operations)

Vital Statistics

Age: 44

Lives in: Clarkston, MI

Office based in: Grand Blanc, MI

Years at GMSPO: 22

Years in current position: 2+

Size of marketing team: 93 people

Size of events team: Seven people plus outsourcing

GMSPO markets automotive replacement parts, service and accessories worldwide under the GM and ACDelco brand names.

-How is the marketing portfolio evolving?

It's evolving rapidly. There's probably never been a better time to be in marketing in terms of choice of media and ways to measure your performance. At the same time it's never been so frustrating to be in marketing as now. The big challenge is knowing which media to choose and how to get the best results.

At GM corporate, this is a time of tremendous change, so our overall marketing spend was down this year. But our forecast at GMSPO is that we'll see a slight increase in 2008 .

The biggest change, of course, is that we are delving into digital communications. In 2007, we shifted some of our spend away from traditional media-especially TV-to create a more digital platform. This includes online advertising and we're starting to do search marketing. At the same time we cut back on some of our motor sports sponsorships.

-How is the role of marketing director changing?

The marketing function is becoming more important. My particular role in the organization continues to be to look at us through our customers' eyes-to be the voice of the customer-the Chief Insight Officer on behalf of the Customer, if you will.

Overall the organization is looking to us to be more strategic. There is more demand for marketing and certainly more demand for results. Along with this comes a strong desire to understand the cause and effect behind this.

The challenge is to make sure we have the capabilities to be successful in terms of our internal team and agencies that can help move us in the right direction. In addition to our traditional agency, we now have agency experts in experiential, digital and other specialties.

-Pop Quiz: Experiential marketing is...

With the explosion of digital capabilities, experiential marketing is any media that allows your customer to interact with your brand. Traditional experiential marketing is under threat. Big displays tend to be expensive and have to do really well to pay for themselves.

I like face-to-face but it has to be done the right way. It serves a purpose in terms of brand image but we have to look at whether it is cost effective as we'd like in terms of generating results. And it has to align with our overall marketing plan. Even if it's cool and clever, we don't want to go there if it doesn't support the overall program.

-The event marketing sliver of your marketing mix is changing how?

2008 is going to be a transitional year for us. We're cutting back on some motor sports sponsorships. You can spread yourself too thin-or overdo it-in some spaces. It's the law of diminishing returns.

-Being a global brand has its benefits. But what are the challenges?

We're spending more and more time on global issues. The biggest challenges are (1) general cultural awareness; (2) maintaining a reasonable level of consistency-which requires structure and mechanisms to achieve; (3) and dealing with the fact that different markets are at different places in the brand/business journey.

The industry in our category is very fragmented. We believe that functioning as one Global team could be a strong competitive advantage for us in the future-but it won't be easy.

-How do you help ensure your marketing is integrated?

We're writing more common briefs and making sure we're aligned that way to support our objectives-both internally and with agency support..

In the last six months, we've instituted agency performance reviews. You can't believe the accolades we get from the agencies. It's a two-hour session where we talk about what went well, what didn't go so well and where there's room for improvement. Also, success is contingent upon how engaged your team is-and how engaged the agency folks are. It's a joint responsibility. In the past we weren't such good partners (with our agency) because we didn't give clarity of direction. But we've changed that.

We're also working toward a new more integrated agency model-where our agencies work with each other, leveraging these "Centers of Expertise" in a coordinated way.

-What do you do in your free time?

What free time? I have four very active kids, two girls and two boys between the ages of eight and sixteen. What little time I have is usually spent driving them somewhere or another.

I do play hockey in a men's pick-up league. It's something I played growing up and got back into when we moved back to Michigan a few years ago. It's my stress release; I can take my aggressions out on the ice rink.