Business Planner, Buick & GMC — Global Marketing

Description

Business Planner, Buick & GMC — Global Marketing

About the Role

The Business Planner serves as a strategic business partner and operating integrator for the Buick and GMC Global Marketing organization. This Level 8 individual-contributor role connects brand strategy, product marketing, marketing strategy & intelligence, media, performance marketing, communications, customer engagement, sales, finance, agencies, and regional marketing teams.

The role translates enterprise and brand priorities into clear plans, investment choices, operating mechanisms, performance commitments, and executive decisions. The Business Planner brings structure to complex, global work; identifies risks and trade-offs; and drives alignment and accountability across a matrixed organization without relying on formal authority.

This position is not the owner of brand positioning, product marketing, creative execution, media activation, or channel strategy. Instead, it ensures that those disciplines are aligned to shared Buick and GMC priorities and are operating against measurable business, brand, customer, and commercial outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Integrated Business Planning

• Lead the annual, quarterly, and multi-year planning processes for Buick and GMC Global Marketing.
• Translate brand, portfolio, product lifecycle, customer, market, and commercial priorities into integrated marketing plans.
• Connect global priorities with regional and market-level plans while allowing appropriate local adaptation.
• Maintain clear business-plan milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, and decision points.
• Coordinate planning inputs across Brand Strategy, Product Marketing, MSI, Performance Marketing, Media, Social and Content, Communications, Customer Engagement, Sales, Finance, and regional teams.

Investment and Resource Planning

• Evaluate trade-offs across brands, markets, nameplates, audiences, channels, and strategic initiatives.
• Build business cases and recommendations that connect resources to expected brand, customer, demand, retail, and profitability outcomes.
• Monitor plan-versus-actual performance and recommend reallocations or corrective actions when priorities or conditions change.
• Partner with Finance and Human Resources to develop investment, budget, headcount, agency, and capability scenarios.

Performance Management and Business Intelligence

• Establish and maintain an integrated scorecard for Buick and GMC marketing performance.
• Connect brand health, consideration, creative effectiveness, media and channel performance, qualified demand, retail outcomes, dealer impact, and profitability measures where appropriate.
• Partner with Marketing Strategy & Intelligence and analytics teams to ensure KPIs are objective-led, decision-relevant, and consistently interpreted.
• Lead monthly, quarterly, and executive performance reviews, highlighting progress, risks, opportunities, and recommended actions.
• Convert complex quantitative and qualitative information into clear, concise, decision-ready narratives.

Operating Cadence and Governance

• Design and improve the operating rhythm for leadership meetings, business reviews, planning forums, and strategic initiative reviews.
• Clarify decision rights, governance, handoffs, escalation paths, and accountability across global and local teams.
• Create practical mechanisms that improve visibility, prioritization, speed, and follow-through.
• Ensure leadership commitments are translated into actions, owners, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
• Identify recurring friction points and redesign processes to improve effectiveness and employee experience.

Strategic Initiative Leadership

• Lead or coordinate high-priority, cross-functional initiatives sponsored by Buick and GMC leadership.
• Manage complex workstreams involving multiple functions, agencies, markets, and competing priorities.
• Anticipate dependencies, surface issues early, and drive resolution of barriers.
• Facilitate alignment when teams have differing objectives, timelines, investment needs, or perspectives.
• Support launch, lifecycle, portfolio, customer, and commercial initiatives that require integrated marketing coordination.

Global and Local Alignment

• Establish common planning principles, tools, and performance language across markets.
• Partner with regional leaders to understand market-specific opportunities, constraints, and execution realities.
• Identify scalable best practices and facilitate their adoption across markets.
• Balance global consistency with local relevance, cultural context, customer needs, and market conditions.

Executive Counsel and Communications

• Serve as a trusted advisor and thought partner to the CMO and senior marketing leadership.
• Prepare executive presentations, business reviews, decision memos, talking points, and leadership updates.
• Provide clear points of view, recommendations, and implications—not simply status reporting.
• Exercise sound judgment, discretion, confidentiality, and political awareness when handling sensitive business matters.
• Tailor communication style and level of detail to executives, functional leaders, regional partners, agencies, and broader employee audiences.

Continuous Improvement and Organizational Effectiveness

• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate, and improve marketing planning and reporting.
• Introduce effective tools, templates, dashboards, and ways of working that increase transparency and reduce administrative burden.
• Encourage disciplined experimentation, learning, and adoption of better practices.
• Help strengthen the organization’s planning capabilities by sharing frameworks, coaching partners, and raising the quality of strategic work.

Success Measures

Success in this role will be demonstrated through:

• Higher-quality and more integrated Buick and GMC business plans.
• Clearer prioritization and faster leadership decision-making.
• Stronger alignment between global, regional, brand, product, and channel teams.
• Improved visibility into investment, resource, milestone, and performance risks.
• More effective allocation of marketing resources against business and brand priorities.
• Consistent adoption of common KPIs, planning tools, and governance practices.
• Improved execution of strategic initiatives and reduced cross-functional friction.
• Increased confidence and trust among senior leaders and key partners.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, finance, communications, strategy, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 10 or more years of experience in business planning, marketing strategy, marketing operations, corporate strategy, management consulting, program management, or a related discipline.
• Experience supporting senior leaders in a complex, matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated experience with strategic planning, budget or investment planning, resource allocation, and performance management.
• Strong business and financial acumen, with the ability to evaluate trade-offs and connect activity to outcomes.
• Proven ability to lead complex initiatives across functions and geographies without direct authority.
• Exceptional written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and executive storytelling skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, including the ability to interpret ambiguous or incomplete information.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities with autonomy, sound judgment, accountability, and attention to detail.
• High integrity and discretion when handling confidential or sensitive information.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in automotive, mobility, consumer products, technology, retail, or another global consumer-facing business.
• Experience in a global marketing organization, brand portfolio, agency, dealer, or tiered marketing environment.
• Experience partnering with Brand Strategy, Product Marketing, Marketing Intelligence, Media, Performance Marketing, Communications, Customer Engagement, Sales, Finance, and regional teams.
• Experience managing marketing budgets, agency investments, headcount plans, or operating forecasts.
• Familiarity with marketing performance measurement, brand health, customer insights, creative effectiveness, media effectiveness, and commercial KPIs.
• Experience with enterprise planning, workflow, dashboard, or data visualization tools.
• MBA or advanced degree preferred.

Leadership Behaviors

The successful candidate will be:

• Strategic and commercially minded: Connects brand ambition to business performance.
• Low ego, high impact: Creates value through influence, clarity, and follow-through.
• A systems thinker: Sees connections across brands, functions, markets, and initiatives.
• Decisive in ambiguity: Frames problems, evaluates options, and recommends action.
• Globally oriented: Respects local market expertise while advancing common standards.
• A trusted partner: Builds credibility through judgment, rigor, discretion, and consistency.
• Change-oriented: Improves processes and ways of working rather than maintaining activity for its own sake.

GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply for this role if you will need GM immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes direct company sponsorship, entry of GM as the immigration employer of record on a government form, and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (e.g., H1-B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.)

This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the selected candidate is expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week {or other frequency dictated by their manager}.

The selected candidate will be required to travel <25% for this role.

Relocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.

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