General Motors appoints new director of marketing & planning

Terry Johnsson, managing director of GM in the Middle East said that Venticich is set to bring a fresh approach and perspective to the regional marketing activities of the world's largest automotive manufacturer.

"We are very pleased to welcome David to the drivers' seat of the regional marketing team - his rich background includes past experience in platform responsibilities, marketing, advertising and finance. I am confident that David will make a significant contribution towards our goal of becoming the number one automaker in the region."

In his new role, Venticich will oversee GM's participation at the Dubai Motor Show in December as well as the launch of 22 new models over the next 22 months across the Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, HUMMER, Saab and Opel brands distributed by GM in the Middle East.

David's career spans 18 years of experience with GM Holden in Australia in marketing, advertising, planning and finance departments, during which period he oversaw key creative sponsorships with Greg Norman for the advent of the Holden Golf initiative, as well as strengthening Holden's dominance of motor sport and specialty vehicles.

Following his time in Australia, Venticich was called to Detroit, where he spent the last nine years starting with global product platform development for large luxury cars. The mid '90s saw GM embrace the dot com boom, appointing Venticich to the team spearheading the e-GM initiative, and then move on to take the reins of GM's global effort to design and deploy effective customer experience strategies working with the newly established Global Sales Service Marketing (GSSM) team.

"The Middle East is a diverse and dynamic market and it is great to be able to play a part in it," said Venticich. "General Motors has been an intrinsic part of regional automotive scene here for over 80 years and has seen amazing growth in the business over the past few years. I look forward to being a part of the GM Middle East Regional Operations, a truly vibrant organisation."

Venticich replaces James Cnossen, who occupied the position of regional marketing director for the last three years and is directly taking on David's previous role of global CRM & B2C director in the United States.