• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Infiniti is beefing up its marketing corps with the addition of a new role. 

Tony Gardina was appointed director of marketing operations and strategy, Infiniti Americas, in May. He oversees Infiniti U.S. marketing operations, leading the development of offers and incentives to support sales and volume. 

He will also identify strategic opportunities across the Americas for Infiniti, work to develop Infiniti's future product portfolio, and strengthen collaboration with Nissan sales and marketing and Infiniti Financial Services. 

Gardina brings more than 20 years of experience in product marketing, sales operations and sales strategy. He joined Infiniti Americas in 2006 as an incentives manager. His most recent role was director of product marketing, pricing, and incentives, Infiniti Americas.

The new position was created when Tiago Castro, vice president of Infiniti Americas, took over the top job in April.

“There's recognition that as we as a company refine and enhance our product portfolio, it's probably in the best interest long-term to separate the incentives and the product marketing,” Gardina tells Marketing Daily. 

Gardina relinquished his product marketing role, but retains incentives, and also takes on the added responsibility of strategy.

“My counterpart, Brian Maragno, will handle the product marketing and I will handle incentives and the strategy piece with regards to incentives,” Gardina says. “The role still allows me the opportunity to be hands-on operationally and not be disconnected from the day-to-day working level that you could have in a purely strategy role only.”

Gardina works with Shelley Pratt, director, marketing communications and media.

“When we put together program ideas, we do bring in Shelley and her team and we talk about, ‘Hey, this is what we're thinking. Is this something that we can market, whether it be digital, social media at an hour level or a dealer level?’ And we have that conversation back and forth,” he says. “On the strategy side, where product marketing and the media and advertising upstream are out in the future, when we start talking about a future model we need to also consider who the target audience of that model is and what that model represents for the brand. 

“And those are areas that the strategy side of my role will work with the product marketing team and Shelley's team aligning, making sure that we have alignment of the target audience, how we're going to market to them (and) what does the product represent for the Infiniti brand to the consumer."

Gardina says he meets with the the brand’s dealer advisory board monthly.

“They give us feedback on what seems to be working, what may not be working or what may have been not thought of as an OEM perspective that they are seeing at the ground level at their stores,” Gardina says. “So I would tell you that doing incentive programming and planning in a vacuum is not successful. So, getting feedback from retailers and our regions allows us to make it as successful as possible.”

Gardina also interacts with his counterparts at Nissan, the luxury automaker’s sister brand. 

“For example, we saw the success that Nissan had with 0% on Pathfinder and Rogue, and we are in selldown mode of the model year 2025 QX60 because we were able to pull forward the start of production and start of sales of model year 2026 QX60,” Gardina says. “So we launched the 0% financing 10 days ago and it's been well received and that was done based on conversations with the regions, but also being very connected with what's working on the Nissan side and consumer feedback."

The new role gives Infiniti the opportunity to work longer term on initiatives that can strengthen the brand, he says.

“And a couple examples I would share with you, conversations I've had with Tiago include identifying the customer lifetime value or how loyal are our customers,” Gardina says. “How often do they come back and get their vehicle serviced at our dealerships, or do they buy a vehicle and then come back three years later, turn it in and buy another one?”

Certified preowned vehicles are a key to success for all automakers, he says. 

“Those customers often times have a higher propensity for loyalty than a customer that just buys a used vehicle,” Gardina says. “So we want to strengthen our certified preowned program, and  have our dealers and retailers think about certified preowned, just like a new vehicle. In other words, think of them as a future new car buyer as the portfolio expands in three or four years.”

All future Infiniti vehicles will be based on Nissan platforms, he notes. 

“So how do we strategically do that such that it's not just a Nissan Plus vehicle, how do we do it so that someone that comes in and looks at a future Infiniti says, 'I didn't realize that QX60 is the same vehicle as a Pathfinder’ or ‘I didn't know the Armada and the QX80 are sister vehicles,’” Gardina says. “So we have to continue that success as we move through the product lineup in future products to make sure that the customer touch points on the product are unique for Infiniti versus Nissan.”