How Mercedes CMO Melody Lee Is Selling an Idea, Not a Car
Join MotorTrend in our celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Each week, you'll hear from the incredible people who have left their mark on the automotive industry.
Building cars is an old business, and right behind that is the business of selling them. Melody Lee doesn't sell cars, per se. Because as Mercedes-Benz North America's straight-talking chief marketing officer, tasked with changing intangibles like brand perception and awareness, she's pushing for the more abstract.
Obviously, the end goal of any for-profit company is to make the profit arrow go up and to the right, and that's perhaps even more true for well-established companies. After all, it's how they've managed to stay in business for a long time, and Mercedes' history can be traced back nearly 140 years. But Lee has the luxury (and challenge) of working beyond simply convincing you to buy the latest E-Class. Leave the relentless selling of cars to the startups. It's her job to preserve what's come before her—and to influence today's brand and products so they'll be around for 140 years more.
Taking a Seat at the Table
You've probably seen some of what Lee does even if you don't know it. She and her team are responsible for developing commercial social media, establishing dealership marketing, organizing consumer and branded events, and expanding Mercedes' overall digital experience. Throughout all that, Lee has made sure to position her company alongside multicultural leaders to make creative decisions.
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Mercedes-Benz's The Table event, held in NYC at the end of 2024.
After Lee's team came up with the idea, Mercedes has held an event called The Table where a curated list of guests participate in an evening of cultural experiences and discussion. The inaugural event took place in Los Angeles and featured Black artists and creators such as Alicia Keys, Andra Day, and Ayoni.
A more recent one in New York City (at which MotorTrend was in attendance) hosted Asian American actors such as John Cho and BD Wong, with Lee acting as the evening's emcee. The menu was designed and catered by a local Asian American restaurateur. All the products and fragrances used were Asian heritage-inspired and from an AAPI-owned brand.
No one was expected to sign the paperwork on a new Benz by the evening's end. So, what was the point?
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Lee acting as emcee at The Table.
'It's good business sense,' Lee told MotorTrend in a recent interview. She broke it down further. 'One hundred percent of growth in automotive is going to come from multicultural segments. Our traditional segments and audiences are shrinking because the entire makeup of the United States is changing. All our growth is coming from the Black, Hispanic, and Asian American communities. That's where the opportunity is.'
But it goes beyond simply pandering to the next target demographic. 'There's a lot multicultural marketing for the sake of saying you do it, being performative, checking a box, or trying to be 'responsible,'' Lee said. 'But for me, it's, 'If we're going to get our growth for multicultural segments, how are we going to tackle that? How are we going to go after it? What are everyone's ideas for doing that?''
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Lee, pictured with actor John Cho, at The Table.
In addition to supporting the local small business owners with Mercedes' checkbook, Lee wants to provide an authentic experience that focuses on these communities in a way that Mercedes might not have before, and to start a conversation with these audiences that comes from a place where they might not be used to being engaged by the brand. Even if it means just starting to build the relationship by inviting people to something like The Table.
'If I got you to think a little bit differently about Mercedes-Benz,' Lee said, 'that's a great first step.'
Risks, Challenges, and Achievements
Mercedes isn't Lee's first foray into the luxury automotive segment. From 2012 to 2017, she was the director of brand marketing at Cadillac, hired to inject some fresh life and youth into the then 110-year-old brand. She was there when Cadillac made its huge and controversial move from Michigan to Manhattan.
At just 31 years old at the time, Lee was certainly one of the youngest executives General Motors had ever hired. And that came with a whole bag of challenges. 'I was like a fish out of water,' she said. 'I was born and raised in Texas and moved to Detroit. I had never worked in automotive, never worked in marketing. My entire career at that point had all been crisis and financial communications. And there I was, wandering the hallways of this very traditional automotive company. I was young and Asian, and I didn't know cars the way all these guys did. It was a bit of an alien experience.'
GM is widely known for its insular and conservative corporate culture, and Lee spoke about not being taken seriously when voicing a differing opinion. 'I was frequently asked in the Renaissance Center elevators if I was an intern for the company or how my summer internship was going,' she said. 'There was a lot of ... criticism [I heard] that I just 'didn't understand' because I wasn't an engineer or designer.'
Not all of Lee's ideas were popular. People thought she and her team (also made up of a bunch of GM outsiders) were doing unnecessary things for the brand. 'There was a lot of pushing water uphill,' Lee said. 'But sometimes, when you've been around for a long time, you gotta try unnecessary things.'
A few things Lee did manage to get through was the opening of Cadillac House, Cadillac's flashy SoHo showroom, as well as the brand becoming a sponsor of the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men's event in 2016. Designer J. Mendel even showed its collection at Cadillac House during NYFW.
'We started to try to move ourselves into arts, culture, and fashion in a way that Cadillac really had not participated in in a long time,' Lee said. 'We [attempted] to position the brand as one that people wanted to be a part of and associated with.'
But perhaps the thing Lee is most proud of is Book by Cadillac, a vehicle leasing subscription service. 'I know subscription is still controversial, and I know a lot of people say it just flat out didn't work,' she said. 'But I think the success of it was it taught us a lot about consumer preferences and behaviors when it comes to buying a car.'
Ultimately, GM sent Cadillac packing back to Michigan, and the Book program was halted at the end of 2018. But from a 2025 perspective, perhaps Book was ahead of its time. Subscriptions are now more the norm than ever, and the practice has expanded to a ton of other automakers.
'I don't know the last time the Germans followed an American company into anything, but in the case of vehicle subscription, they did,' Lee pointed out. 'Mercedes, BMW, Porsche—they all followed Cadillac in that regard.'
Lee was at Cadillac for six years before departing in 2018 for stints at Shiseido, Herman Miller, and MillerKnoll before joining Mercedes. Looking back, she's very proud of what she and her team were able to accomplish.
'I built a really strong relationship with the engineers and the designers,' she said. 'I think I was able to illustrate if marketing wasn't there to help build and keep a strong brand, nobody would know about the products they put their hearts and souls into. The symbiotic relationship between brand and product became illustrative of my own internal relationship with the people who actually worked on the cars.'
Yet she also acknowledges it wasn't a perfect time. 'I made a lot of mistakes, to be honest,' she said. 'I was very opinionated, very precocious. I definitely had opinions without even thinking about why something might have happened or really understanding the context and the background.'
Like for every executive just starting out, the challenging early jobs yield some of the greatest lessons. And Lee certainly doesn't regret her time at GM: 'I'm still rooting for Cadillac.'
Building Toward a More Equitable Future
Lee didn't think anything of taking on a colossal job like Cadillac. She owes her outlook and work ethic to how she was raised. 'It's the Asian upbringing of overachievement, punching above weight, working really hard, and never, never giving up,' she said. 'All those values came into play and really helped me out. I might joke about my tiger mom but, man, some of the values and practices she instilled in me did come in handy in my career.'
To give back to the community, Lee has been on the board of Apex for Youth for the past four years, which is a New York–based nonprofit that empowers Asian American youth from immigrant and low-income backgrounds.
'It's about offering generational change for the Asian community,' Lee said. 'Helping children is core and fundamental to what Apex for Youth does, but for me, there's a much loftier goal: If we can unlock their potential, help them see their way through a mental health crisis, or get them mentorship, it can really create a more equitable future. If you can change the trajectory of an Asian child's life, it will shift the generation going forward.'
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