Former Hyundai marketer Angela Zepeda has joined X as global head of marketing, the executive announced via a LinkedIn post. X CEO Linda Yaccarino also shared the news on the social media platform owned by Elon Musk on Monday. X has not had a marketing lead of this sort since 2022, the year Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion.
“X is the world’s most meaningful platform so it was essential to hire an exceptional leader like Angela to further shape our transformation,” Yaccarino wrote. “Most recently serving as CMO/Chief Creative Officer for Hyundai, Angela brings incredible experience and expertise, understands how to grow a brand globally and is exactly the right person to lead X's marketing as we accelerate our innovation.”
Jumping to the company formerly known as Twitter marks a pivot for Zepeda, who acted as Hyundai’s CMO for nearly five years and previously had a long stint at Innocean USA, the carmaker’s creative agency. During her tenure at Hyundai, Zepeda achieved widespread recognition. She was named among the most influential CMOs by Forbes last year.
Zepeda left Hyundai in late August following an internal reorganization that saw performance marketing and creative split into separate functions. Zepeda’s role was changed from CMO to chief creative officer, an appointment with a narrower remit. Sean Gilpin, initially tasked with overseeing the new performance unit, was promoted to Hyundai’s U.S. CMO around Zepeda’s exit, overseeing both marketing and performance duties.
Zepeda joins X at a turbulent time for the social media platform, which has contended with a series of controversies under Musk. The mercurial entrepreneur, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, has an especially rocky relationship with advertisers.
Musk has launched several industry charm offensives only to lash out at brands that have paused or peeled back spending due to issues with brand safety, or ads appearing alongside unsavory content (Hyundai has had its X advertising on hold since the spring after its campaigns ran around hateful posts, according to The Wall Street Journal).
Content moderation is generally perceived to be a lower priority under Musk, who has made enabling free speech a core part of his mission at X, along with converting the site into an “everything” app that hopes to eventually encompass banking, payments, shopping and more.
The brand safety issue came to head in early August when X filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a not-for-profit division 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 shuttered quickly following the lawsuit to avoid what would likely have been a draining legal battle. The WFA, a trade body, plans to fight X’s allegations in court, including claims that GARM used coercive market power to enforce advertiser boycotts that have hamstrung X.
Zepeda has a tall order in burnishing X’s reputation with consumers and promoting the platform’s latest bells and whistles amid the drive to realize the “everything” app positioning, which remains a work in progress. X recently lost over 20 million users after being banned in Brazil.
