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Cadillac plans to keep its Manhattan ZIP code, shunning Detroit

Johan de Nysschen is credited for separating Cadillac from the GM nest in Detroit, but despite his ouster earlier this year, the luxury division says it will remain headquartered in New York City's tony SoHo district. "It's 100 percent that we're staying here, that was never a question," Cadillac spokesman Andrew Lipman told the Detroit Free Press. Cadillac in April announced that it was replacing de Nysschen, after four years running the flagship brand. The new brand boss, Steve Carlisle, previously was president and managing director of GM Canada. De Nysschen led a big push to separate the luxury brand from its parent company as a separate business unit, announcing the move to New York in 2014 as a way to gain more autonomy and better tap into the global luxury zeitgeist. The move was controversial at the time in some quarters, though Lipman told the Freep that GM brass made the decision to relocate Cadillac to the Big Apple months before de Nysschen arrived at the company. Cadillac now occupies the 15th and 16th floors of a high-rise building on Hudson Street in SoHo, where it has between 140 and 150 employees. It also operates a ground-floor retail space called the Cadillac House where it displays cars, operates a coffee shop and stages events, including with fashion designers. Its vehicles are still designed and engineered back in the Detroit area, however. "The amount of time people spend at Cadillac House has been increasing, and it's become a destination," Lipman said. Cadillac used this year's New York Auto Show to reveal its new 2019 XT4 compact crossover, its second offering in the all-important luxury crossover segment after the XT5. It goes on sale this fall. Related Video: Image Credit: Cadillac Marketing/Advertising Cadillac GM Crossover Luxury cadillac xt4

Cadillac still planning for big things in China

Despite some hiccups, China remains the auto industry's great hope for new vehicle sales, with significant sales gains and a huge upside. Nowhere is that hope more fervent than at General Motors, which offers eight different marques in the Asian nation. China has been GM's single biggest market the last three years running, and is unlikely to give up that title anytime soon. Yet its premiere brand, Cadillac, has remained essentially stagnant, selling just 30,000 units in China last year. That's in a segment where sales of luxury vehicles has outpaced that of the larger Chinese market. So what gives?
According to Cadillac officials Autoblog spoke with in China this week at the Shanghai Motor Show, it's been a problem of product - they haven't had the right ones. Displacement taxation issues, import tariffs and currency fluctuations have all conspired to make the brand's products less appealing than they might otherwise have been. But GM is stepping on the gas with Cadillac, and executives are eyeballing 100,000 sales by 2016 - more than triple the Wreath and Crest's current volume. And the expectations for the brand only get more ambitious from there - they're shooting for 10 percent of the luxury market by 2020. Bob Socia, President of GM China, promises that there will be a new Caddy launched in the market each year from now through 2016 and most will be built in China. Characterizing the company's efforts to revive the brand's fortunes as a "relaunch" of sorts, Cadillac also figures to gain dealers as GM expands its sales outlet footprint westward.
New products like a made-in-China XTS sedan (with a market-specific 2.0-liter four-cylinder to avoid heavy displacement taxes) will help, and Socia hinted that the ATS sport sedan could be next in line for in-country production. The SRX crossover - currently the brand's best-selling model in China - will also likely get a long look for future local production when the next-generation model is introduced. In the meantime, Cadillac unveiled the Escalade ESV Hybrid (shown above) as its latest model addition to capitalize on the market's white-hot luxury SUV segment.

General Motors shaking up its marketing... again

One of the things that dogs the full comeback of General Motors is the instability of its marketing. That part of the automaker got yet another big shakeup today when GM confirmed what I have been tweeting for a few days - strong rumors that the Chevrolet and Cadillac ad accounts are walking to new ad agencies.
Cadillac, GM's luxury brand, is going into review from Fallon Worldwide, Minneapolis and the indications are that Campbell-Ewald, Chevy's old ad shop, will end up with most or all of it. C-E just announced that it was moving from its long-time home in Warren, MI to a new downtown Detroit office next to Ford Field, just blocks from GM.
The other shoe to drop shortly will be the shift of GM's most important brand, Chevy, from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco to McCann-Erickson of Troy, MI. McCann used to be the agency for Buick and GMC, as well as GM's corporate advertising, and has retained some pieces of business over the last few years. Sources have even told us that it was McCann that did a lot of the creative work on Chevy's new ad platform, Find New Roads. (Not to be confused with a former McCann tagline for Saab, "Find Your Own Road.")