Nissan Marketing Boss Says New Z Car ‘Actually Broke Our Website When We Launched It!’

At multiple points in history, Nissan has been a supremely revered car company. From the early Z-model sports car renaissance of the 1970s to a nearly simultaneous launch of two era-defining models (the 2009 Nissan GT-R and 2010 Nissan Leaf), the history coming out of Yokohama is lined with great successes. Plus, the brand is partially responsible for the mid-aughts JDM-craze and its respective subcultures, including grassroots drifters favoring the S13 240sx as well as being the whip of choice for none other than the late 2 Fast 2 Furious star Paul Walker.

But the brand has also faltered at times, sometimes independently of its product. Late in 2019, Nissan announced it was cutting 12,500 workers globally over the next three years, amid a 95% net income drop and CEO scandal. Compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, Nissan's global sales volume dropped sharply each year since 2017. At its peak in 2017, Nissan's global sales reached 5.7 million units, while its 2022 volume plummeted to 3.3 million units.

Nissan has played its cards well despite an industry-wide lull. Launching the new Z sports car, revamping the Frontier and Pathfinder, and even building the all-new Ariya EV on the heels of the infamous Leaf, Nissan is setting itself up for future successes.

And it's Allyson Witherspoon's job to make you all want to buy these cars, as she was recently promoted to the role of Corporate Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer at Nissan. With a tenured career as an executive at multiple manufacturers including Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Infiniti, we sat down with her to get some insight into Nissan's plan to sell its way through the 21st century.

Autoweek: Can you tell me more about your new role and how your job has changed?

Allyson Witherspoon: For the last four years, I've been the US Chief Marketing Officer for Nissan USA, specifically for Nissan. Now, I will transition to become a Corporate Vice President as well as Global CMO and have responsibilities for Nissan plus Infiniti branding and marketing. So I 'm responsible for brand marketing, product marketing, as well as merchandising a lot of stuff.

Autoweek: Let's talk about Gen Z and Millennial buyers and different marketing tactics including Tik Tok, augmented reality, and virtual reality. How are you effectively reaching those younger, perhaps more cost-conscious, consumers?

Witherspoon: What's interesting about marketing is that, regardless of the demographic, the fundamentals are reaching the consumers where they are. It's really about understanding where those consumers are when it comes to platforms. They're not going to be on linear TV—they're going to be on something that's much more streaming or digital-based. That's the channel part of it, but then how you reach them and what you say to them, is equally if not more important.

When thinking about Tik Tok, it's not enough to just put your commercial on Tik Tok. That's not going to work, right? So you need to have content that's going to be relevant and engaging and able to kind of draw people in. We kind of rebooted our social media strategy a couple of years ago and are starting to focus on vertical video. So there's that part of it, but also, how do we start to use influencers to help us tell our story? How do we understand what the trends are?

Autoweek: Talking about approaching cost-conscious buyers, Nissan still offers very affordable cars even when car prices are going up right now. What's the marketing strategy on a car like a Sentra or a Versa in terms of saying, 'Yes, it's affordable, but it's also still worthwhile and a good car that you're going to enjoy'?

Witherspoon: The big strategy behind that was, we didn't compromise anything when it came to how we planned for the vehicles and how we package the vehicles. You can have this beautiful package but you can have all of that at a really accessible price. You don't want to approach consumers and say, like, 'Oh, you want discounts or cars for cheap.' Consumers don't like that. For us, it was all about accessibility, and you don't have to compromise. I think that's a fundamental belief for us at Nissan. Consumers don't need to buy the luxury car—they can have all of that in this exciting affordable package.