 Guarascio, the 55-year-old vice president and general manager of marketing and advertising for GM's North American operations, controls the fourth-largest media budget in the United States, $1.5 billion a year in ads and promos. Call it the ultimate leverage. "I can pick up the phone and call any major player in the business," he casually acknowledges. Yet he didn't set out to become one of the most powerful men in the world of advertising. Like his second cousin, legendary New York Yankee Phil "The Scooter" Rizzuto, Guarascio dreamed of playing professional baseball. That was before he quit law school and let a blind ad in The Wall Street Journal set his course. As a young apprentice at the advertising agency Benton & Bowles, he found he had a lawyer's instinct for negotiating the deal, but he also discovered an inborn showman's flair. Phil Guarascio found within himself a natural pitchman, one who innately understood the relationship between smoke and mirrors, style and substance. "His sense of theatrics and love of life give him that fine distinction," says Sean Fitzpatrick, vice chairman of the McCann-Erickson Worldwide ad agency. "He carries everything off with fine style, whether in the way he works, the cigar he chooses or the way he dresses." It is a style that seems at once both essential and yet equally out of place at GM, an often hide-bound company of boardroom gray, off-the-rack suits and carpet remnant ties. The automaker within the past year has accepted the move to casual clothing in the workplace, perhaps for no other reason than its inability to dress up in the first place. Yet Guarascio continues to wear his hand-tailored Armani and Joseph Abboud suits, bedecked by a closet full of impeccable silk ties. With his dark, Mediterranean looks, he is Julio Iglesias doing James Bond. It isn't always an easy fit. GM prizes executive anonymity. As in the Japanese corporate culture, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. The very idea of a personality profile is anathema to the corporate overseers. Guarascio hesitates, they say no, then they reverse the decision only reluctantly. Yet Guarascio seems to have found a comfortable fit. "GM lets me be me," he says. "If you have a fierce drive to win, there is room for a personality and operating style out of the traditional path." One thing is certain about Phil Guarascio: his style, like his career path, is anything but traditional.
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