CAREXPERT has shaken up its editorial leadership team with the creation of two new roles filled by Matt Buchanan as director of editorial content and Marton Pettendy as managing editor, while promoting production editor James Wong to marketplace editor.

Mr Buchanan moves from Microsoft, where he was senior content program manager, while Mr Pettendy – a former GoAuto managing editor who joined the publication in 2001 – had served as Carsales managing editor for the past 12 years.

CarExpert CEO Damon Rielly said an objective when hiring for the newly created director of editorial content role was to “find a leader from outside the automotive industry”.

Matt Buchanan

Mr Buchanan’s most recent Microsoft role had been in the areas of artificial intelligence content policy, trust and safety, and GPT engineering.

Prior to this, he spent 18 months as head of content for financial publication Livewire Markets, another couple of years in a Microsoft content role and several years with the ABC and Fairfax Media.

Mr Rielly said CarExpert had been seeking “someone who was a content expert in both editorial and video and had already been working at the forefront of AI”.

“We are excited to say that we have found our ideal candidate.”

During Mr Buchanan’s time with the ABC, several projects he worked on were shortlisted for, or won, awards for smartphone and tablet apps.

He is described by CarExpert as “an award-winning editorial director and journalist with extensive experience in leading content teams at major media and technology companies”.

CarExpert co-founder Alborz Fallah said: “While others have been laying off editorial staff, we’re thrilled to bring in Matt and Marton, who will help mature our systems and processes to continue our strong growth.

“We firmly believe these appointments will further elevate our results and set new benchmarks in the near future.”

Mr Pettendy said it was “great to be part of a business that believes in the power of content”.

“Having joined from an equivalent position at Carsales, the two things I’ve noticed are the business’ appetite to go to the next level and the team’s enthusiasm to remain Australia’s biggest new car website. I look forward to the challenge and am excited to join an already high-performing team.”

Marton Pettendy

Describing his new employer as “a business that not only values content, but also innovation”, Mr Buchanan said he was “thrilled to be joining such a terrific, multi-talented and ambitious team”.

“It has been very clear to me throughout the process that CarExpert is hungry for continued growth and is not afraid of looking outside the box to develop content that makes buying the right car quicker and easier.”

As well as recruiting Mr Buchanan and Mr Pettendy while promoting Mr Wong with a mandate to lead CarExpert’s “continued expansion into content that drives new car sales”, the company has moved to independently host videos on its website and investing $4m in a multi-format advertising campaign.

“All that we are doing is designed to enhance our content and make it easier for consumers to identify and buy the right new car for them,” said Mr Rielly.

“We’ve always believed in content’s ability to inform, persuade and influence. We are confident that we’ll continue to see growth as both choice and competition in the new car sector explode.”