Cadillac's marketing solved by pack of journalists on Facebook

If you've ever been on Facebook, then you've likely fallen into one of those occasional black holes of online conversation where a post generates scores, if not hundreds, of competing comments that spins off in a dozen directions. This past weekend, one such vortex managed to swallow a good portion of the U.S. automotive media — all because a young executive dared to question some conventional wisdom about why people buy Cadillacs.

The talk began with this interview by Fortune of Melody Lee, a 33-year-old marketer hired as Cadillac's brand manager. Attracting more people Lee's age to buy Cadillacs will be her major challenge; the average Cadillac buyer is 59.5 years old, a full decade beyond the average Audi or Infiniti owner. She notes that she often finds herself in meeting to be not only the only woman in the room, but the youngest person there, and that changing the "old boy's club" mentality of the industry will be needed to get people thinking differently about Cadillac:

And then the ruckus began.

Post by John Pearley Huffman.

In any other industry — and in relation to most other automakers — nothing said in this interview would have made a ripple. To understand the allergic reaction, you have to know, or worse, have lived through the recent history of General Motors, which saw its decline sped in the 1990s by the arrival of a marketing chieftain named Ronald Zarrella. Zarrella took over GM’s marketing in 1994, and eventually was directed by GM’s board to oversee its entire North American business due to his experience selling contact-lens products.