BOB LUTZ, GM SALESMAN

At 77, General Motors Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz was just named GM's global marketing chief as the automaker emerges from Chapter 11. BusinessWeek senior correspondent David Kiley talked with Lutz about what he'll bring to the job--and how he'll change it.

Do you think you're in tune with where the consumer is going?

Most people assume I'm an engineer. Actually, my MBA is in marketing from the University of California, where I took courses in psychology, anthropology, and sociology. I did my thesis on how people respond to visual stimuli and how it influences their actions. I was head of sales and marketing at BMW in Munich when "The Ultimate Driving Machine" tagline was born. And when I was Chrysler president, I had to be attuned to marketing: It was so important to [CEO Lee] Iacocca.

What's wrong with GM's marketing? How will you change it?

To spend $200 million on manufacturing, we have to get board approval, with top management involved from an early stage. Yet we spend billions on marketing and delegate that to too many people at the lowest levels. It's insanity. Now, ideas on how to tell our story will be reviewed by me and often by Fritz [CEO Henderson]. We remade the global design process by going with our instincts, not consumer testing. This process will be analogous to that.

In the '90s, GM brought in outside marketers, with terrible results.

That was a typical GM shotgun approach. They scooped up people from packaged goods companies. Selling cars isn't like selling soft drinks and toothpaste. The automobile you drive carries much more social currency, and the job requires that perspective.

Is there an ad or campaign on your radar for what GM should be doing?

The Evian water online video, with the infants roller-skating. It's arresting. It's very likable. At GM, we will be much more active in executing ideas that spread virally on the Internet.

Some say you're too much an insider to revolutionize GM's marketing.

The structure we've just set up is more radical than anything we've ever done. We're grouping design, marketing, and communications. If design has a good idea for which it needs funding, we can take it from advertising or communications. If marketing needs money, we can take it from design. That flexibility never existed before. It was often impossible for the best ideas to get funded. That stops now.

Is GM ready for a cultural change?

In 2001, when I took over global product planning, it was as dysfunctional as marketing is now. I said we aren't going to do it this way anymore. People said, "Here comes crazy Lutz." But GM took to [my ideas] very fast.