General Motors’ CMO calls for the “return of the human beings” to marketing

Reed Karaim

General Motors, the automaker, is aiming to blend digital data with a human-focused strategy in reaching consumers.

Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) may be revolutionizing marketing, but Deborah Wahl, global chief marketing officer for General Motors (GM), believes the rise of increasingly sophisticated digital tools and metrics has come at a cost.

“As we give increasing control to machines, I always ask myself, ‘Is it possible that we’ve lost some of our humanity?’ As I look at the landscape, I do think that we have,” Wahl told the 2020 Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM) held by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in Palm Desert, California.

In many ways, she expanded, big data and artificial intelligence have led...

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