Gain valuable insights from Tarryn Knight, General Manager of Marketing at Ford South Africa, in this edition of Leadership Insights: Five Questions with a Ford Leader. With a wealth of experience in automotive marketing, Tarryn brings a strong focus on executional excellence, brand storytelling, and strategic alignment. In this candid Q&A, she shares what it takes to deliver a consistent customer experience, how she’s energising the Ford brand through bold campaigns and partnerships, and the importance of focus, curiosity, and confidence in leadership. Join us for a thoughtful and inspiring look into the mindset of one of Ford’s newest leaders.
1. What are your biggest focus areas in the second half of the year?
There are so many exciting focus areas! We are managing four important campaigns: Live the Ranger Life, Territory Dark Edition introduction, and retail campaigns for Territory and Everest.
We’ve also just signed a great partnership in the golf and cycling spaces and my team and I will be dedicating much attention to all the branding and activations around these opportunities.
Critically, discussions around the 2026 budget have started and so I need to focus attention on our scoping and budgeting for the job to be done next year. It’s an iterative process so there is a lot of scoping, adjusting and revising to be done before we can start the procurement and planning processes. All this needs to be in place before the end of November.
2. What keeps you up at night?
‘Executional excellence from an external perspective’ is how I would describe what is consuming my thoughts. It is so easy for us at Ford to assume that because our part of a task is done, and/or because we are familiar with the excellence of our processes or products, the market experiences Ford that way. Unfortunately, that isn’t currently the case.
It’s critically important that we stand together within teams, across teams, and with the Dealer network to deliver excellence through all Ford touchpoints as experienced by customers and prospects in the market. Given that competition in the mobility and automotive sector is increasingly fierce and dynamic, our execution of the various components of the Ford Family Promise, of marketing, and of our support of the Dealers, is now more important than ever.
Tomorrow is not another day. We need to be shining the Ford badge and tightening the nuts and bolts of our deliverables every single day.
3. What are you most looking forward to?
Results. With all the hard work that has gone into building a strong foundation in the first half of this year and the changes that my team and I have been through, I’m most looking forward to seeing the needle move on our key metrics in digital and brand image reporting. It would make me feel satisfied if the team could look back on their achievements this year with a sense of pride.
4. How do you use the Ford OS behaviours in your role and skill team?
Being new to the company, I’d have to say that I’ve done a lot of ‘seeking to understand’ (Collaboration). My passion and interest can sometimes be misinterpreted as interference, but I hope those who work closely with me now know that the energy I press into discussions is actually rooted in a genuine keenness to learn about and support other business areas.
The behaviour that I lean into most is ‘Do Only What Matters’ (Focus). The indicators of that behaviour – prioritising Customers and Ford; creating clarity through data and facts; finding and eliminating all forms of waste – are guardrails for how I approach my work.
5. Advice you would give your younger self?
There’s a type of brazen confidence that seems to fade with experience and the growing awareness of complexities. I’d advise my younger self to hold on to that ‘Screw it, let’s do it’ confidence rather than giving in too often to doubt and caution. It would be that advice, and to relax and enjoy every phase of life more!