After more than eight months on the job, Nissan's top marketer has found his groove. 

Tiago Castro, who took over in January as senior vice president, U.S. marketing and sales, Nissan and Infiniti, sat down with Marketing Daily  via a video call to share his strategy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Marketing Daily: Tell me about the direction you took with this year’s Heisman campaign. It’s a little different approach than what you’ve done in the past, correct? 

Tiago Castro:  We are very much focused on driving momentum and sales. We sat down and said, ‘how can we leverage the Heisman, going from a brand awareness campaign to a product consideration campaign? The brief was simple: no house, no mascots. The car is the star. Obviously it becomes very difficult to talk about a vehicle if you're inside the house. The team came up with this idea of “tell them a Heisman sent you.”

We have three primary goals that use to make every decision. Does it help sell more cars? Does it help take care of the customer. Does it help make more money? Those three things we always go through those lenses, and if they don't, we shouldn't do it. And this campaign, when we made the adjustment, it truly helped us with engagement of the dealer network, with selling more cars.

Marketing Daily: Staying with the topic of college football and college sports, I understand you’ve entered into a partnership with a local university?

Castro:  Our home is Nashville, and sports are super important. So when I looked at that idea, and Vanderbilt is right here. It only made sense to connect with them. So it's going to be football, basketball (female and male) and baseball. Nissan will sponsor those sports at Vanderbilt,

Marketing Daily: Another local marketing initiative you’ve been part of for the past 10 to 11 years, stadium sponsors for the Tennessee Titans NFL team. I see the new stadium is coming a long and the huge NISSAN letters are going up on the stadium as we speak. You’ve got to be excited about that.

Castro: The 2027 season will be the first time that we have the new stadium. This is a 20-year commitment. It's a commitment that represents not just a commitment towards the Titans, but more importantly, it's a commitment towards the state of Tennessee, the city of Nashville, our employees. It's a statement to say we are here to stay, and we're going to grow with the city and with this team.

Marketing Daily: Infiniti has revealed vehicles the last several years at special events in New York City. Are you a fan of big reveals? 

Castro:  Yes and no, depending on the circumstances. Here's what I'm a fan of: I'm a fan of driving demand before you drive inventory. I'm a fan of doing launches that are just not just the OEM. It's the OEM and the dealers together doing something, engaging the dealer network behind our plans, having very clear communication, and then when you launch the vehicle, you see the demand meeting or exceeding your expectation.

Marketing Daily: How do you balance your time between Infiniti and Nissan? 

Castro: I establish a very clear process on how to operate on a monthly basis between the two brands. I have meetings that help me understand the performance of each product. It's very consistent. I try to keep like my two hats. If I'm talking Infiniti, I put on the hat of Infiniti. There's certain fundamentals that are the same. There's a few things we have to do differently. I would say on I am much closer to Nissan on the daily operations.

Marketing Daily: What are Nissan and Infiniti's biggest marketing challenges?

Castro:  If you step back and think about the essence of Nissan, the essence of our brand, we've always been a brand that delivered great quality for a good value. Our messaging and our positioning used to very aligned with this. Maybe a few years ago, we lost track of that, but we're back at it, and we're really emphasizing now the foundation, what we call DQRS, which is durability, quality, reliability and safety. So most of our ads are going to be associating the brand with that, delivering value. Value doesn't mean price per se. The Rogue hybrid will provide probably the biggest value in a market, based on the fact that it is not only efficient, is also quick and is super quiet. Our engineering testing shows that it's actually quieter than a Lexus NX.

I think what happened on Infiniti is the aspirations of the branding versus what we delivered — they were not matching each other. What is Infiniti all about? Luxury is important, but what type of luxury are we looking for? What is the essence of Infiniti? What do people care about? One thing that people always cared about with Infiniti was performance. Well, what should we do to reflect that? You know, people would say we're crazy to bring a rear-wheel drive sedan to the U.S. market now. Maybe we're crazy, but it's very aligned with the positioning of the brand. It will be exciting. There will be a market for it. We're going to be reasonable in the volume expectations. It's a niche product, we understand, but it's well positioned.

Marketing Daily: You have an opening in marketing at Nissan — CMO Allyson Witherspoon recently left the company. Do you intend to fill that position soon?

Castro: It was a great opportunity for me to step back and deep dive with the agency, with the team on what are the things that are working well, what are the things that are not working well, remap. What is our goal, our common goal between between Nissan United, Omnicom’s dedicated team, and ourselves? Is the structure correct? So we are in the process of doing all this. We will eventually nominate somebody, but I need some time for myself and the team to deep dive, make the adjustments necessary, and then move forward.