Andrea Brimmer is the chief marketing and PR officer of Ally Financial and is responsible for leading all aspects of the company’s integrated marketing and brand transformation, driving unprecedented growth and disruptive consumer engagement.
Brimmer joined the company in 2006 and spearheaded the creation and launch of the Ally brand in 2009. Since becoming CMO in 2015, she has unified the brand under the company’s “Do It Right” mantra, and at her direction, Ally has established itself as a “different” kind of financial services company, dedicated to solving customer pain points that traditional institutions ignored.
Brimmer is widely recognized as one of the country’s most innovative and effective marketing leaders, known for being a dynamically disruptive and culturally astute trailblazer. The work of her team garnered recognition for Ally on many prominent industry lists and rankings, including the 2022 Fast Company Brands that Matter list. Her many honors include being named a winner of the 2020 Adweek Brand Genius award, three-time honoree on the Forbes list of World’s Most Influential CMOs and the only three-time winner of the Financial Communications Society Marketer of the Year award. She was recently named to the 2023 Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO 50 list.
Brimmer is passionate about advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, and using her platform to create good in the world. In 2022, she launched the marketing industry’s first 50/50 pledge with the goal of spending equal amounts in advertising for women’s and men’s sports. Her leadership in gender equity resulted in her being named to the 2022 Adweek Most Powerful Women in Sports list and as the 2022 WISE Woman of the Year.
Prior to joining Ally, Brimmer spent 20 years on the agency side in Detroit, where she led the Chevrolet account. She holds several board positions with organizations including eHealth, the Ad Council, Effie Worldwide and the Mobile Marketing Association. She serves on Michigan State University’s Sports Management Advisory Board and is chair of the Professional Advisory Board for the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University, where she also played varsity soccer for four years.