Elon Musk’s new hire has an impossible job

She made it cool to drive Korean budget cars. Now she’s figuring out how to position X as a place that advertisers and users want to be.

As X’s new global head of marketing, Zepeda is stepping in to help rehabilitate the social-media platform’s reputation two years after Elon Musk bought the company then known as Twitter. Since then, many major advertisers have departed or slashed spending, sometimes citing concerns about controversial and offensive content on the platform.

Zepeda’s prior employer, Hyundai, paused advertising on X this spring after an ad from the automaker appeared adjacent to antisemitic and pro-Nazi posts on the site. Hyundai said this week that it hasn’t resumed advertising on the platform.

Musk last year told advertisers pulling their ads from X they could “go f—yourself." Musk said in March that X’s advertising and subscription revenues had started rising rapidly, without providing numbers.

X declined to make Zepeda available for an interview.

Zepeda has a tight relationship with X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino, her new boss. They became close when Yaccarino oversaw ad sales at NBCUniversal and Zepeda controlled Hyundai’s hefty ad budget, according to people familiar with the matter. Hyundai spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising in the U.S. every year.

Zepeda was a frequent guest at Yaccarino’s annual all-expense paid retreat to the tony Cal-a-Vie Health Spa in Southern California, an event that Yaccarino threw for top female ad buyers and marketers, according to people familiar with the matter. Attendees were treated to massages and facials and would hear from NBCUniversal TV talent during the conference.

“She loves a big challenge and I don’t think there’s a bigger challenge in the industry right now than trying to establish the X brand outside of Elon Musk," said Lou Paskalis, a longtime ad-industry veteran and chief executive and founder of AJL Advisory, a marketing consultancy. “The key question is whether or not Linda can give Angela enough air cover with Elon so that Angela can work her magic and reposition X."

Zepeda is a frequent fixture at advertising and marketing industry events and conferences. Forbes listed her as one of the world’s most influential CMOs last year.

Fashion forward

Zepeda, 58 years old, was born and raised in Orange County, Calif., with her five siblings. She dreamed of moving to New York City and studying fashion, but her family encouraged her to stay local, she said in a video interview with advertising-trade website MediaPost in 2022.

She received a degree from California State University in Fullerton in communications and advertising. She had already worked at several ad agencies before deciding to join the master’s program at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

“I think that discipline of getting that M.B.A. was really important because all of my clients all had graduate degrees, and I had realized that what was happening was we were just coming up with creative ideas, but they weren’t really solving business problems," she said this year on a podcast from ad-tech company Trade Desk.

Hyundai overhaul

After working at Hyundai’s onetime dedicated ad agency, Innocean U.S.A., Zepeda became the first woman in Hyundai Motor America’s top executive ranks when she was named chief marketing officer.

Zepeda enlisted famed photographer Annie Leibovitz in 2021 to help humanize the Korean company with a marketing campaign that included portraits and videos of Hyundai car owners and employees.

She also relied heavily on celebrity-laden ads to tie the brand to pop culture. A 2020 Super Bowl commercial called “Smaht Pahk" featured celebrities, such as actor Chris Evans and comedian Rachel Dratch using Boston accents to talk about Sonata’s smart parking feature that lets drivers automatically park the car using a key fob.

Her brand overhaul was helped by Hyundai’s investments in building better-designed vehicles that looked and felt more like luxury automobiles.

She’s also worked to build up Hyundai’s cultural status. She often looked for ad deals that included the ability to work with actors and or showrunners to create ads that tied into specific programs or have the company’s vehicles appear or be mentioned during shows.

Hyundai had the Ioniq 5, an electric sport-utility vehicle, integrated into “Black-ish," a sitcom that ran on Disney’s ABC broadcast network, in 2022. During one episode, Anthony Anderson, who plays an advertising executive on the show, worked on a faux Super Bowl commercial about the SUV.

“Angela is smart, she gets things done and she works her butt off," said Disney ad chief, Rita Ferro.

In 2022, Zepeda was deciding which performer to hire to perform during a Hyundai dealer meeting in Las Vegas. She asked colleagues to help her decide between artists such as Bon Jovi, Gwen Stefani and The Weeknd in an effort to make them a part of the decision-making process, according to a person close to the company. Zepeda also made sure that junior members of her team were able to spend time in the VIP area to take pictures with Stefani—the team’s choice in the end.

“She’s had access to the very, very top people within companies, and yet you would never even know it by the way that she connects with even the most junior people on her team," said Jason Sperling, chief creative officer at Innocean U.S.A. “She made time to socialize and to find out about what’s going on in your life." He added that “she was a big reason for my coming" to work for Innocean.

But earlier this summer, Zepeda left the company after being demoted when Hyundai Motor America split its marketing department in two.

Though Zepeda’s presence on X is hardly prolific, her Instagram account is a who’s who of ad-industry royalty and celebrities. CMOs with big ad budgets often get tickets to premieres and invites to awards ceremonies. Photos show her chatting with Jude Law on a red carpet, posing with LL Cool J and attending the Oscars.

Alexa Corse contributed to this article.