NEW YORK -- Jaguar Land Rover North America has shaken up its marketing ranks, bringing in outsiders from Lexus and Porsche and separating sales responsibilities from marketing.
Jaguar Land Rover executives said the changes are being made as the company prepares a major product assault in the next five years.
Details were not disclosed on Thursday.
Kim McCullough, 49, a Lexus and Toyota veteran, is the new brand vice president for Land Rover. She previously was assistant general manager for the western U.S. region for Lexus and also worked in marketing communications at Toyota.
David Pryor, 37, former vice president of marketing for Porsche Cars North America, is Jaguar's new brand vice president.
Both will report to Andy Goss, who will become president of Jaguar Land Rover North America on May 1. Goss, 53, was the former CEO of Porsche Great Britain. He will be taking over for Jaguar Land Rover North America President Gary Temple, who is retiring later this year.
The three newcomers were hired by Jaguar Land Rover's chiefs -- Carl-Peter Forster, CEO of the British automakers' owner, Tata Motors; and Jaguar Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth.
Sharon Corrigon, previously Jaguar's vice president of marketing, is now the brand's national sales operations manager. Chris Marchand, formerly executive vice president of marketing and sales for Land Rover, is now executive vice president of operations for both brands and oversees sales, service and parts.
In addition, Finbar McFall has returned to the United Kingdom as director of global product marketing for Land Rover. He previously was vice president of marketing for Land Rover in the United States.
McCullough will be launching Land Rover's Evoque small SUV in the United States in October. Land Rover hopes to grab customers from the Lexus RX, she said.
"It is obviously a high-volume SUV, and we are looking for a small piece of that," says McCullough, who worked for Land Rover for several years before joining Toyota in 2001. Her last job before leaving Land Rover about 10 years ago was model manager for the Discovery.
"Having the Tata ownership has infused the company," she said. "The team … is becoming all-star … pulling people from BMW and Lexus."
McCullough said details of the Evoque launch are not firm. She will be updating dealers on the Evoque at the end of May at meetings in Las Vegas and New Jersey, where they also will meet the new marketing team.
Pryor, who launched Porsche's Panamera sedan in the United States, spent 13 years at Porsche.
He said he sees many similarities between Jaguar and Porsche, which was teetering in the 1990s but has enjoyed a comeback in recent years with the Cayenne SUV and Panamera sedan.
"People knew the brand but not the products," Pryor said of Porsche in the 1990s. "The difference is they (Jaguar) have good product out there now. If I look at the investment in (Jaguar) product and people, it is almost like a start-up."
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to one of the companies that two of the new executives at Jaguar Land Rover are coming from. The two are coming from Porsche.
