Former VP says GM is lacking ‘Passion And Creativity’

In a recent interview with Advertising Age the former General Motors VP of Marketing & Advertising, Mike Jackson, believes that GM’s culture is “so bureaucratic it stifles all passion and creativity”.

Here are some interesting points Mr. Jackson made about his time at General Motors:

“The automaker’s U.S. operations have too many layers for approval of ads. Work on major launches begins with the divisional ad manager, and ads for crucial models must move all the way up to top management for approval. It wasn’t unusual, he said, for 15 or 20 people to present the work in meetings.”

He labeled GM as a “PowerPoint culture” and a “bureaucracy of meetings culture.” During his time at GM, Mr. Jackson said “there were no meetings where people just sat down, had a discussion and made a decision.”

Mr. Jackson also criticized the automaker for placing engineers and finance people with no marketing background in marketing positions. Agency teams often presented their work to executives with less experience and often no experience outside the auto industry.

For more on this interview, feel free to view the whole article via: http://adage.com/article?article_id=137277