Former Hyundai CMO named global marketing chief of X

Former Hyundai marketer Angela Zepeda has joined X as global head of marketing, the CEO announced in a LinkedIn post. X CEO Linda Yaccarino also shared the news on Elon Musk’s social media platform on Monday. X hasn’t had such a marketing leader since 2022, the year Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion.

“X is the most impactful platform in the world, so hiring an exceptional leader like Angela was essential to continue to shape our transformation,” Yaccarino wrote. “Having most recently served as CMO/Chief Creative Officer at Hyundai, Angela brings incredible experience and expertise, understands how to grow a brand globally, and is exactly the right person to lead X marketing as we accelerate our innovation.”

The move to the company formerly known as Twitter marks a shift for Zepeda, who served as Hyundai’s CMO for nearly five years and previously had a long history at Innocean USA, the automaker’s creative agency. Zepeda has gained widespread recognition during her tenure at Hyundai, including being named one of the world’s most influential CMOs by Forbes last year.

Zepeda left Hyundai in late August following an internal reorganization that separated performance marketing and creative into separate functions. Zepeda’s role was changed from CMO to chief creative officer, a narrower scope of responsibility. Sean Gilpin, initially responsible for overseeing the new performance unit, was promoted to Hyundai’s U.S. CMO around the time of Zepeda’s departure, overseeing both marketing and performance responsibilities.

Zepeda joins X at a tumultuous time for the social media platform, which has struggled with a series of controversies under Musk. The capricious entrepreneur, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, has a particularly turbulent relationship with advertisers.

Musk has launched several industry offensives to attack brands that have paused or cut spending due to brand safety issues or ads running next to unsavory content (Hyundai stopped running X ads since the spring after its campaigns were riddled with hateful posts, according to The Wall Street Journal).

Content moderation is generally seen as less important under Musk, who has made enabling free speech a key part of his mission at X, along with turning the site into a “do-everything” app that will eventually include banking, payments, shopping, and more.

The brand safety issue came to a head in early August when X filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a nonprofit arm of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) focused on developing digital safety standards for advertisers. GARM members, including Unilever and Mars, were named in the complaint.

GARM quickly closed down after the lawsuit to avoid what would likely have been a grueling legal battle. The WFA, a trade organization, plans to fight X’s allegations in court, including claims that GARM used coercive market power to enforce advertiser boycotts that crippled X.

Zepeda has a tough job of polishing X’s reputation among consumers and promoting the platform’s latest bells and whistles as it seeks to position itself as an “everything” app, which is still a work in progress. X recently lost more than 20 million users after being banned in Brazil.