Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [33]
The solution, finally, was to have an outside body builder (in this case, ASC, using its Mexican facility) design, engineer, and build a convertible version of Dodge’s small Shadow sedan. It was not a happy program: Even after countless fixes, the cars filled with water in downpours, and the squeaks and rattles demanded high radio volume to drown them out. It was a financial and technical flop. Jerry’s second “brand innovation” was something the market had forgotten to ask for: a convertible pickup truck! And so, again using an outside shop, we proudly announced the world’s first, and only, pickup truck with a folding cloth top! It was a resounding failure; almost none were sold. “Brand management” at Chrysler was soon abandoned.
But car companies rarely look at one another’s failed experiments, just as every left-wing politician believes that the only reason socialism has always failed is because he or she wasn’t in charge.
John Smale, non-executive chairman of GM, strongly encouraged a move to brand management, but with a twist: going beyond Chrysler, the GM system decreed that every model be a “brand.” Thus, unlike Chrysler (where, at least, Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler were legitimate brands), Chevrolet was itself a collection: Impala, Malibu, Cavalier, Camaro, Corvette, Lumina, and the plethora of truck nameplates . . . all of them “brands.” And this across all of GM North America! With Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac, GM encompassed over ninety distinct “brands.” Each had a brand manager to whom reported a brand product manager and a brand marketing manager. But there was also a need for coordination by category, so the passenger car brand managers were, in turn, supervised by a Chevrolet passenger car manager; this was repeated in the other GM divisions (couldn’t call them “brands” anymore, even though that’s what they were!), and trucks.
Smale found the ideal executive to run this organizational quagmire: Ron Zarrella, recruited from pharmaceutical and optical company Bausch & Lomb. Ron was an intelligent and affable executive who, it later turned out, had lied about having an MBA. He brought in dozens of bright, young marketing people to man these hundreds of new positions and create individualized advertising for each and every car line. Breaking the overall ad budget down into ninety-plus separate budgets resulted in so little expenditure per car line that almost every “brand” wound up below the awareness threshold level. Many, if not most, of the stalwart newcomers came from such complex industries as beer and soft drinks. Most didn’t have the remotest clue about the car business. Many came from New York City and barely drove. The industry press didn’t fully believe the brand management hype, and GM was hard-pressed to defend it, especially after one ex–consumer product whiz announced publicly that there was really no difference between marketing “baby wipes and Cadillacs.” The same skills were involved, he claimed.
Across town at Chrysler, where I was now president, automotive reporters frequently asked me what I thought of GM’s brand management. I couldn’t help but be totally honest, just as I had been years before when I derided GM’s new, much-touted composite-bodied minivans (the ones with the long noses that begat the nickname “dust buster”). I had asserted that Chrysler had little to fear from these “plastic pachyderms,” forecasting dismal failure. I’d been right. And so, I probably enjoyed a certain level of credibility with the media when I heaped renewed scorn on this latest scheme, this latest “breakthrough” in the automobile business. Once again, I forecast dismal failure and once again I was right. (My forecasting