“I’m Wired to Disrupt”: How Nissan’s Allyson Witherspoon Stays One Step Ahead

When it comes to innovation, engines are positively revving in the competitive automotive sector and Nissan is a brand that’s built a reputation for groundbreaking tech, driver experience and marketing. For Nissan US’s chief marketing officer and global brand advisor Allyson Witherspoon, innovation has always been a cornerstone of marketing, as she explains to Omnicom Advertising CEO Troy Ruhanen in the latest episode of his ‘One Step Ahead’ interview series.

“I think marketing is all about innovating and this constant curiosity about technology and tools and everything that's being enabled around that,” she says. “To me innovation is around what are the tools that are going to help us get to great results faster… but also how do we use innovation to help drive greater insights, and greater impact for consumers.”

But while innovation is a fundamental part of marketing, it’s crucial to get the rest of your marketing fundamentals in order before you can even think of adding technology to the mix.
"To me, the biggest piece of it is that regardless of what the technology is, the basics of marketing still need to be there. And so I think that hasn't changed regardless of what technology is available. So I think understanding the basics of marketing, how do we reach our consumers with relevant information, with something that's super impactful for us to meet them where they are in their shopping process."
Driving innovation within a global team like Nissan hinges on the sort of culture you create, explains Allyson."The other piece of it is around an open culture where you can really feel there's not this fear of failure, you're okay to take some big risks. Not everything needs to be perfect,” she says.

That openness is particularly important when it comes to artificial intelligence. There’s no ‘best practice’ playbook when you’re dealing with a technology that’s developing so rapidly. Even so-called experts are relatively new to the field, and it’s developing so rapidly, which means that a democratised approach makes most sense for Allyson.

"I think that what's really interesting about AI right now is that nobody has it nailed, we're learning. And I think, [it’s about] just encouraging the teams to remember that and there's no perfection… It's just about understanding what the tools are, how we can use them, and how we can get to greater work."

Just as important as internal culture is the nature of relationships with external partners. At their best, they can fuel innovation by bringing in outside expertise, inspiration and perspectives. And at their strongest, good relationships can help marketing teams weather the slings and arrows of these turbulent and rapidly-changing times. Looking back on some of those Black Swan events of the past few years that have rocked the wider market (Covid, tariffs, the supply chain disruption of the early 2020s), Allyson says that being closely aligned with her partners at Omnicom was key to getting through.

“To me, the biggest piece is we have a shared vision… regardless of what evolution we're going through, that has been the same,” she says. “When I think about our partnership, the agency team is equally as invested in the success of Nissan as we are. And you can feel that in all of the everyday conversations. It doesn't feel like it's transactional.”

This rapidly changing landscape and the need to constantly innovate is inherently exciting for Allyson who describes herself as ‘wired to disrupt’. But what really keeps her going are the people that she’s on this ever-surprising innovation road trip with.

"What keeps me motivated is actually the team. And I think just the passion that I see people pour into what we're doing on the marketing side, on the agency side, when I talk to our engineers, I am endlessly inspired to help keep telling those stories."

View the full interview here.