Nissan Executives Getting Creative, Listening to Feedback

Nissan’s North American arm is in the midst of a major pivot. After a few years of wading through shallow water, the company has a barrage of new product on the market, with even more coming soon. To match that, a new marketing era will debut in July, part of the efforts by Chief Marketing Officer Allyson Witherspoon to change the perception of the company in buyers’ eyes.

Witherspoon will be on stage as part of Newsweek’s Women’s Global Impact event in August. Ahead of that, she shared the details of Nissan’s change with Newsweek, and spoke about what lessons she has learned during her career and how she is carrying those forward.

This year is a big year for the company. Despite the negative press regarding its billions of dollars in debt and four CEOs in five years, the company has a host of new and refreshed product coming to market. That started in January with the new-generation Nissan Armada and continued with the redesigned Murano and refreshed Rogue and Pathfinder – all SUVs. The automaker just debuted the third-generation Leaf, which has become a crossover and will enter the U.S. market later this year.

Nissan is also taking on Trump’s tough tariff talk head-on, creating an ad campaign surrounding it that debuted in unison with the New York International Auto Show earlier this year.

In short, Witherspoon has had her plate full.

“One of the things that I’m really looking forward to, which will roll out in July, is a new look and feel for us, a new brand and model approach focused around quality, durability, reliability and safety,” Witherspoon told Newsweek.

“We’ve had very, very strong dependability and initial quality studies that have come out. When I look at our brand metrics, I think that there is a perception gap between what is the reality with our refreshed lineup that we have in the market today and some legacy challenges that we had, over 10 years ago around quality,” she continued.

Witherspoon also faces other brand storytelling challenges. “We’ve lost differentiation,” she said. “Our advertising has been misattributed to other brands. This is a big thing that I wanted to tackle when I came back to the U.S. for this role. [I wanted to] make sure that when people see our marketing or our advertising, it’s notably, distinctly coming from Nissan.”

That new marketing will go back to Nissan’s roots, Witherspoon relayed, saying to expect edgier and bolder marketing that has been seen in recent years that conveys a more confident attitude. “I want us to tell distinctly Nissan stories and have that visual identity and the attitude that we’re telling it to be distinctly Nissan,” she said.

With over 25 years in the industry, Witherspoon is in a position to offer advice to young marketers and business leaders: “Be curious.”

Gone are the days of sitting back and riding the wave. “You have to be really curious about what’s going on. Look at what the trends are. Look at what other brands are doing, look at what influencers are doing. I think, that’s where a lot of interesting marketing is happening right now, especially in the digital and social media space.

“I think curiosity is important, and I think that also leans into leadership, because I don’t have the answers to everything. When I was younger, I thought everyone did at the executive level, but the reality is that we’re working with the information that we have. We’re working with the experiences that we have and trying to make and guide the right decisions,” she said.

“I want to make sure that as a leader, and I try to instill this in my team, that I am open to feedback – what people are saying, what consumers are saying, what are the key trends, what the things are that you need to look at.”

Witherspoon and the company she works for continue to be open to feedback. In April, Ponz Pandikuthira, regional senior vice president and chief planning officer at Nissan Americas, stated that the company has been leaning in and listening to dealers more, working to address their needs as one of the pathways forward of success.

The turnaround is underway. Nissan brand sales were up 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025.