Joel Ewanick is not on a good trajectory. The former rock star marketing chief of Hyundai, and later defenestrated global marketing chief of GM, hired on as “Chief Commercial Officer” at Fisker. Not even that. He will be interim Chief Commercial Officer until Fisker has found a suitable replacement for allegedly retiring Richard Beattie. Beattie had signed on last December.
A Chief Commercial Officer is not just responsible for the company’s commercials, as one may presume. At Fisker, the title is bestowed on the person that is responsible for the company’s “global marketing, sales and customer service divisions.” Which are more like squads.
Ewanick awaits a minuscule advertising budget at Fisker. The only notable ad so far was a one-pager in the Wall Street Journal, and that can be had quite cheaply if only a few targeted metro editions are bought. With some 2,400 Karmas allegedly sold worldwide, Ewanick will be underemployed as a sales chief. As a customer service chief, however, Ewanick will have his hands full. All 2,400 Karmas were recalled in August, and customers of a $100,000 car can become quite a pain.
In any case, TTAC’s career counseling division says that a job at Fisker is the wrong choice for a rock star.
His career is on a seriously downward trajectory. There’s big money in small engine repair, according to what it says on my matchbook cover.
1. How did Fisker afford him?
2. Did he settle for less just to get a job?
The most effective thing he could do at Fisker would be to quit immediately and let them sink without him.
Rachel Konrad managed to leverage her PR job at Tesla into being communications director for the Renault-Nissan Alliance, so working for an EV/Hybrid startup isn’t necessarily a career dead end.
All I have to do is look at Joel Ewanick and I fall over laughing; Joel is the spitting image of my BFF, Gerald. What good times we’ve had over the years.
Gerald left the very successful graphic design business he’d founded due to work burnout and frustration that he and his wife could not have children. This led Gerald to return to school and he is now one of the leading Oriental fertility doctors in SoCal. He uses the fact that he now has four children as proof of his expertise. Personally, I think the smokin’ hot blonde, twenty years his junior, that he left his first wife for probably has more to do with his full nest than his medical skills.
Good luck, Joel, wherever your trails take you.