Nissan reshuffles top marketers

Nissan GB is appointing a new marketing director as part of a management reshuffle foreshad-owing its biggest car launch this decade.

Brian Carolin is being brought in from Nissan’s European headquarters in the Netherlands to replace David Archibald, who becomes sales director in the UK.

Carolin is general manager for product marketing at Nissan Europe, but has also worked at Nissan’s Sunderland plant in its personnel and purchasing departments.

Carolin has been instrumental in developing the pan-European marketing plans to launch the Primera, which goes on sale across the continent in September or October next year.

The UK is Nissan’s largest European market – it holds a 4.6 per cent share by volume – but it has has set internal targets of a seven per cent market share by 1998.

“Carolin has pulled together all the policy for marketing the launch of the car in Europe,” says a Nissan GB spokesman. “There is a lot of new product, but Nissan GB is quite a young company in terms of marketing.

“It has been a case of trying to turn a brand that was struggling because of a ‘stack them high and sell them cheap’ mentality into one that has a quality feel.”

Carolin’s appointment follows the promotion of GB sales director Andy Green to executive vice president of Nissan Germany.

The company says all the personnel changes are part of its policy to move senior managers to expand their experience.

In the year to June, Nissan GB spent more than 32m on advertising. The launch of the all-new Almera in September added an estimated 8m to the spend.