What Would Nietzsche Drive?

Steve Jobs vs. The Wall Street Protesters

2011-10-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

(not the way to get a job)

Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder, died today. The first thing I thought when I heard of his passing this morning on my way to work, was, "Uh oh, there falls a keystone in the wall in the wall of American exceptionalism," meaning that America is losing the kind of wild imagination, when hitched to hard work and business genius, that spawned American phenonema like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Bill Gates. The tenacity of these characters, rooted in the free and rich soils of American society, sprung new products and services that changed the world and made America great . . . and hundreds of thousands wealthy.

For the past three weeks, protesters have occupied Wall Street, protesting everything from the profitability of banks to the Right-to-Work movement to corporate handouts. I do not dismiss all of these grievances out of hand, as I strongly sympathize with the calls to end corporate welfare and the illegal wars overseas. I'm also not willing to say that conditions are perfect today for finding decent work or starting your own business. But 1976, when Jobs co-founded Apple, was much better? Hardly.

Were Steve Jobs a 20-year-old at NYU today, would he be in a drum circle or marching for the right to have other people provide for his happiness or livelihood? I don't think so, it would take time away from pursuing his goals. Look at the white sign in the lower right hand corner of this picture. It says a lot about what's wrong with America today.

Steve Jobs dropped out of college to start a company. He took a very large risk. My ancestors packed up their stuff in England, Ireland, Germany and Lithuania, got on a boat to start over in country they'd never seen. They took an even bigger risk. Where is that kind of risk-taking today?

America, it seems to me, can only see rewards these days. The unhappy coincidence of a faltering economy and the rise of global competition has made these rewards much harder to materialize. I think we forget that between reward and risk comes the work of developing one's talents, merchandising them, relentless effort and making the most one can muster from whatever twe have. Instead, America blames others for woes. I myself am guiltly of this on occassion instead of focusing on what I can control most effectively: my own thoughts and behaviors. We have the right to do so, but most are wrong in so doing.

We each should feel a responsibility to develop our talents and make sure the world makes good use of them; in some cases, like Steve Jobs, we can become wealthy beyond our wildest dreams and literally change the world. For most people, this means leading productive, peaceful lives in which we produce enough for ourselves, and even produce a surplus that provides for strangers (taxes or charity). The protestors, now on their third-week of occupying Wall Street, may want to think about going back their job search. Or more likely, beginning one.

The Objective of PR Should Be . . .

2010-10-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

To help an organization achieve its objectives. Period. Sounds shiny-strawberry-on-the-whip cream obvious, but all too often, it is not. In a recent meeting, someone said, "Why don't we do x?" And why not?
X sounded interesting.
X was cool.
And depending on how X was configured, X could be developed in a way that would help this organization achieves one of its objectives. Let's call this legitimate objective "Y."
"What should X look like? How will we pull off X? Wouldn't X be cool?"
From square one, X should be challenged, "How does X support Y, precisely?"
I my travels, I find PR people sometimes focusing on X; Y is an afterthought, or worse yet, a non-thought.

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I have a new client whose name I can use because I'm going to tell you how smart he is . . . because he actually is pretty damn smart, and has this focus on True North, on the Big Y, that is refreshing. His name is Joe Verbanic. He's the Marketing Director for OSRAM/Sylvania's Automotive Aftermarket.  In a recent presentation to him on our 2011 plans, we had objectives spelled out, except they weren't the exact right "Y." After listening to our presentation, he calmly, methodically, asked us to go back to those objectives and asked us to remember what he'd told us when we first presented our capabilities several months ago on the our Automotive Practice. His "Y" was the proverbial strawberry-on-whip cream: "Will It Drive Sales?" or WIDS? Then we talked about lots of X's, or things we could do to drive sales. WIDS had secured reserved parking in the front row of the meeting attendees' minds, and after discussing--as is so common in every PR ideation/planning session--how this X would work compared to another, we went through lots of cool, creative ideas and put them to the WIDS test. Some super interesting ideas didn't pass muster, so they fell off, as they should have.

Because cool ideas are not the point.

Achieving Y is the point.

X serves Y, not vice versa.

Occasionally we forget that relationship, or don't consider Y as we should in the first place. People in these meetings on the agency side are then often afraid to say so of their own idea ("I don't want to contradict myself in front of colleagues and clients") or even scarier, the clients' ideas ("I don't want to challenge the client's ideas and upset them or show disrespect") or most sacrosanct, a co-worker's idea ("Bad politics, they'll think I'm angling for pecking order with the client or higher ups on our side of the table."). But if Y gets lost, as it sometimes does, we have to have the gumption to ask the question . . . especially if you're convinced that it doesn't help the cause.

                                                                         # # #

By the way, Joe really wants to know--especially now that it's getting dark earlier--and earlier if you're satisfied with how well you can see driving to work in the dark or driving home at night. If you're not satisfied, you do something about it for less than an hour or your time and $50 bucks or less. If you want to see what real people say about these (in short they LIGHT UP THE NIGHT, but won't last as long as stock), check this thread which gives contains a pretty good assortment of real people's experience with them. Sylvania has actually improved the design to make the more a bit longer lasting in recent years.

Let's thank Joe V. for keeping Y, our shiny strawberry, in our gun sights. Y is the Master, the PR is but the servant.

A Tale of Two Turbos: Cruze vs. Jetta

2010-10-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

Reuters has a good piece on turbochargers that ran yesterday that nicely sums up a good deal of the good on turbos, especially for the U.S. market. Ten years ago, U.S. motorists enjoyed VW products that could get an honest 50 mpg highway (EPA said 49 mpg I seem to remember) from their stellar little 1.9l turbodiesel that went into the Golf and Jetta. Decent U.S. compacts were seeing mid- to high-30 mpg highway. Fast forward to today, and that gap between turbo gas and turbodiesel is quickly closing. The ever-scrappy Scott Burgess of The Detroit News wrote a piece today on the new uber-fail Volkswagen Jetta (google the reviews, no one really likes it), which points out that the turbodiesel only manages 42 mpg, even though the engine has only gained 100 cc of displacement.

In Detroit's corner, the new Chevrolet Cruze will go up against the Jetta (and forthcoming, sure to be pretty competitive Ford Focus), and the Cruze Eco will get 40 mpg highway using regular grade pump gasoline and a very underspecified 1.4l gas turbo. Pricing for the Jetta diesel was unvailable for the new model, but we know the Eco model of the Cruze will start at $18,175. There's no way you'll be able to touch a new Jetta diesel for under $20K; even though they've made the car cheaper, the diesel adds a variable geometry turbo (as opposed to a simpler, waste-gate, non- variable geometry turbo), pricey high-pressure fuel injection (Cruze to use cheaper, less efficient port-fuel injection) and not-cheap exhaust aftertreatment that is far more costly than the conventional 3-way catalytic converter in the gas powered Cruze (oxides of nitrogen, and to a lesser degree, particulates--otherwise known to we wood-burners as "soot"--are still the bane of diesel exhaust). Let's guess that the cost difference is $4,000. Is $4,000 worth it for a 5% improvement on something that already gets 40 mpg?

Don't get me wrong, I love turbodiesels. Diesel proponents would rightly point out that the Jetta would likely have 100 additional lb.-ft. of torque that would make the Jetta likely feel much more stout in daily driving. But most consumers are not cross shopping torque ratings like this author.

My point: gas turbos, as pointed out in the Reuters piece, are likely to skyrocket in coming years. Ford already said they'll offer gas turbos on 90 percent of their vehicles in coming years. Full disclosure, GM and Honeywell are clients of my firm; I own neither GM nor HON stock. That said, would I really like to own a Cruze turbodiesel, especially if they made a hatchback or wagon? Hell yeah.

There's No Yoda in this Toyoda; Ill-Advised Move Mr. Toyoda

2010-02-17T08:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/17/business/main6215315.shtml

Won't testify before Congress in their most profitable market. Big backlash to come. Watch this space.

Out of the Category and Into the Culture: Hankook Case Study

2010-01-05T04:46:00.000-08:00

Most auto suppliers have a fairly easy time earning media placements in the trades: a leadership change, a truly innovative new product, or an executive willing to shoot his mouth off on a trend will do the trick. Then again, the trades are supposed to cover your company and your products if you actually have news.

But what about non-automotive publications? If you have a consumer-facing product or service, one that actually changes the driving experience appreciably for consumers, how successful are you at earning coverage outside of automotive?

We call this the move from category (auto media) to culture (consumer-centric media). Interestingly, the media relations tactics--the story angles, the pitches, the contextualizing of your story--will also work in many cases for non-automotive media relations . . . . you just have to be a whole lot more clever about how to throw your pitch.

Let's take non-automotive business media as an example. The following happened last summer.

Hankook, a South Korean company and the 7th largest tire manufacturer in the world, was bringing their CEO to NY for a few days, and wanted some business press exposure. Mind you, Hankook's stock doesn't trade on U.S. exchanges, they have a fairly small North American footprint by way of employment and zero manufacturing in North America. So why cover them if you're Business Week, Time magazine or any of the wires (Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, Dow Jones), without a whiff of hard news?

The answer: make the story bigger than Hankook, but first and foremost, find the story. Here was ours. "Between the low-cost, low-tech Chinese and high-cost, high-tech Japanese there emerges a low-cost, high-tech tsunami of aggressive business growth from South Korean, Inc. Samsung, Hyundai (the only winner of the 2009 auto sales "carpocolypse"), LG all came to become ascendant in the U.S. market by providing incredibly quality, incredible value and in many cases best-in-class warranty. The Japanese are scared, and should be. The Koreans are coming. And winning. Hankook Tire is no different. They are the fastest growing tire company in the world with the world's highest margins. They are the #1 supplier to the fastest growing market in the world (China). And oh by the way their CEO will be in NY on these two days, would you like to talk to him?" We targeted five specific Tier 1 business outlets in NY and succeeded in securing interviews at four. For this company, in that media market, that's a win.

Too many times, PR people will lead with "Company x has a new product, want to talk to our CEO (of a nobody company)?" Why would they? Companies introduce new products everyday, so unless your firm is launching the new iPod beater, journalists have more importance things to cover, like say Apple or Google. Great pitches, like any good story, have the ability to make people care. It's more art than science, but trying to tell a bigger story is always a good place to start.

On Independent Thinking and the Real Significance of the G8

2009-07-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

Suffice to say that the Pontiac G8 has been receiving fairly stellar views for while now; click here to see thecarconnection.com’s “review of the reviews.”

Now there’s loose talk that the G8 will survive Pontiac’s demise as a Chevy or sorts, but GM (client) has not and will not confirm this. The enthusiast in me—as well the detached PR practioner—hopes they figure out a way to make this work.

The enthusiast loves this car because while everyone thinks “muscle car,” all accounts are that this is not the “beast-in-a-straight-line, but-I-wouldn’t-want-it-as-a-daily-driver/boy racer/aging-boomer-with-no-taste” car some might have guessed it would be. Where I live in Northville, Mich. (Ford country), I see a surprising number of these cars. I walk by one house every day that has a new-ish 5-series BMW in the driveway, and the G8 looks every bit to be its equal (the BMW I see, and the G8 I always see in the Cabbagetown area I live in are both white. . . nuanced menace. Dig it.) The PR guy likes it because making great product and creating "owner-advocates" is the best PR going for any consumer products company. I don't even own one and I find myself always talking about it.

Reports are that body integrity, structural rigidity, steering feel, brake feel/strength are all the equal of the benchmark 5 (people say Infiniti is coming up on BMW; having been in a recent G37, I don’t think BMW or Pontiac have much to fear . . . Carlos, check quality control bud . . . dash rattles? Come on, not in 2009). That the G8 has the beans under the hood to run with a 550i with the big mil is the least biggest surprise.

What I believe are the biggest markers of “quality” to most people in the showroom or on test drives. . . the whooomp with which the doors close; the body control and quick chassis recovery from railroad crossings or deep pocked Michigan roads; shutlines . . . the big Poncho/Holden can legitimately hang with the 5-series . . . that’s amazing. BMW can put a ton more money into pricey shocks, better/lighter/stronger structural materials, etc. because, well, it’s costs a lot more.

I think fans of GM should be elated, as should independent thinkers who believe that whoever makes the best cars should win; the doubters/cynics should wallow in some strong cognitive dissonance, because this isn’t about the G8 living on or not . . . it’s about having such kickass product development within the company that any GM product could and does compete with any BMW, let alone for at steep retail discount.

I owned two BMWs, a ’97 M3 and ’94 325iC. Both were great or good to drive, but horrifically expensive to own. If GM could make a G8-like car, this means they could make another car that equally baffled the cynics and delighted the open-minded drivers of America. Here’s to hoping they do (whoops, Camaro already is). Rock steady Tom Stephens, rock steady.

What Granholm Should Say, But Likely Won't

2009-02-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

Daniel Howes lays out a very cogent, disarmingly fair and hard to dismiss outline for what Michigan’s Governor should really say tonight in her State of the State address.

Given that she can’t run again (ok, at least not for that office), and has done very little to right a sinking ship in the last seven years (movie tax incentives aside), she could do much to get religion on restructuring state government and taxes—albeit late—as her tenure comes to a close.

Read Dan’s recommendations here. I wonder what Chris Bzdok, Traverse City's Mayor Pro Tem, would add to his prescriptions.

Supplier PR at Auto Shows?

2009-01-16T15:26:00.000-08:00

In the chaos and buzz that is social marketing in 2009, often lost is the idea that PR—especially in “old school” industries like automotive—is still fundamentally about helping clients tell their story to their most important audiences. For B2B in automotive, the wires (Dow Jones, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, et al.) are still a big deal. Our Honeywell client was jazzed that we were able to pull this together:

Honeywell sees more demand for turbochargers Reuters

Of course, Honeywell had no real news hook. But they had a real story thanks to Ford's turbo news. I’m not normally a fan of trying to move supplier stories at auto shows: media are there for cars, not car parts. But high-value, highly-differentiated technologies like turbochargers or advanced lithium-based batteries can earn coverage if positioned as pieces of larger stories and trends.

By the way, where were the battery guys making news? Could have been like batting practice on Wii sports.

We can do it for movies . . . why not batteries? Or business in general?

2009-01-09T04:54:00.000-08:00

Here in the D, there's been a serious uptick in movie making over the last year or so. Why? The State has been serious and aggressive about soliciting movie makers to come here, and moreover, adding serious tax incentives to make Detroit and Michigan a more attractive place to shoot films. The new Clint Eastwood movie that looks awesome (anyone who pulls an M1 Garand instead of a shotty out for home protection is not to be fussed with in my book, great gun) and was shot in and around Detroit because of it.

Is anyone else thinking that, "Hell, if we can get movies made here through tax incentives, how about doing the same--if not more--for advanced battery research and production." Or if full employment, and higher paying employment, is a goal of state gov't, how about incentivizing the whole state somehow? I'm told Michigan's business climate is one of the worst in the county. Let's change that.

I'd vote for L. Brooks Patterson. Would you?

B2B and Social Media: Yes We Can and Yes You Should

2009-01-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

Quick: should social media be of interest to the old school world of automotive B2B public relations?

For about a year, I’ve struggled with this question, but now I think the answer is yes. My earlier doubts were only one-layer deep: were the powertrain purchasing folks at OEMs, for instance, really hanging out on Facebook? No, I concluded. But I may have been wrong in two ways I’d not thought of before.

1. The powertrain purchasing exec, in this case, may very well not be on Facebook, but maybe his direct reports are. Maybe the engineers who are technology consumers are. Maybe his boss is because his kids urged her to get on Facebook to stay in touch, which leads to . . .

2. Maybe in the last year, or just the last three months, he did finally get on Facebook in order to keep up with family, his kids, or just because he has other friends that he actually can keep track of (I think of my retired dad who went to Rose Hulman . . . he asked how I could find these people, and my brother and I over Christmas said, “Find them through Facebook’s Rose Hulman alumni groups.”)

But others who’ve thought more about this have five interesting reasons why this works for B2B. Read them here. This is by far the final word on this topic, and I suspect I’ll spend a good deal of 2009 refining how we use social media to help companies talk to other companies—and consumers—through these channels. Should be interesting.

December 2008: GM Beats Toyota

2009-01-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

And now for some more (marginally) good news: yes, the Big Three got hammered in December for reasons everyone knows, but the big Japanese players fared even worse. GM was down 31%, Ford was down 32%, but Toyota was down 37%.

In these parts, we’ll take any sign that could be contrued as positive and breathe deeply. Not sure on the exact timing, but Toyota and GM might have both had zero percent financing deals running concurrently. Normally, if GM does much better than others—in this case, Toyota, but not Ford—it’s because GM had a massive incentive/giveaway that others did not, so this is interesting as Toyota had to pony up to the zero percent financing bar still fewer were ordering their vehicles relative to Toyota.

What’s interesting to watch closely are the subtle, if anecdotal, signs that the pervailing coastal sentiment of “domestics = bad; foreign makes = good” may be beginning to change. Read the comments sections of Dave Kiley's post on the Ford Fusion smoking the Camry Hybrid. The contrarians are starting to root for Detroit, and this is a trend that I suspect may continue as Ford and GM especially continue to make extremely competitive product.

In Case You Missed It, Some Good News for GM

2009-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

For those of you that missed the action over the holiday, GMAC--GM's formerly wholly owned lending arm--received a financial infusion from the Fed that led them to offer zero percent loans on new car sales. You can rea more at David Welch's write up from New Year's Eve: http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2008/12/gmac_gets_a_gov.html

As everyone expects industry sales figures today from December to show more more serious sales declines, the effect of this should be allow more consumers to loan money for cars. The lack of credit in recent months has been a very serious problems for dealers and automakers; this should help remove at least one roadblock on the auto recovery highway.

Michael Moore weighs in on the Senate's failure to pass the auto loan

2008-12-12T14:01:00.001-08:00

For once, I agree with Michael Moore. His take on the auto industry loan is worth reading, only if to the see the truth through one of America’s great storytellers.

Question for Richard Shelby: Can we call you Dick?

2008-12-11T05:24:00.000-08:00

Richard Shelby: Can we call you Dick? If we may, then why, Dick, on Fox News recently, why would you lie—and then let people know you just lied—about your interest in helping foreign companies at the expense (via neglect) of the U.S. automanufacturers?

Wallace: Do you have as Sen Levin has said an agenda to help your local foreign auto makers?

Shelby: I don't have an agenda, but I'll tell you this, in the South, from South Carolina to Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas, we have about 124,000 people employed in the automobile industry. They are competing. They are competing. GM, Ford, Chrysler can compete, but not under the model that they have now [Ed: that part is true]

124,000 is very specific number. Where did you get it if you don't have an agenda?

You know, Dick, the Hyundais and Toyotas and Hondas and Mercedes of the world come from countries where their Federal governments pay for workers healthcare. For better or worse, the U.S. largely does not. So when the Big Three could, they paid for their workers healthcare.

Wasn’t that terrible? U.S. citizens . . .or let me put this another way . . . voters, had their healthcare provide for if they got a job working for the Big Three.
And these same companies paid into large pension funds to help fund their retirements. I know Alabama workers would have like that, wouldn’t they?

Two points: one, the playing field isn’t level and GM, Ford and Chyrsler are very much trying to shed these legacy costs (lower standards of living for American blue collar guys, isn’t that awesome? I frankly do not want the guy next to me at the gas pump to make Chinese or Mexican wages; yes, the entitlement mentality must go, but I wish poverty on no one).

But you can’t just turn the spigot off, Dick; two mega forces (the formerly Big Three and the UAW) regrettably have to work at at rate I’ll call “hastened incrementalism.”

As Wagoner testified, the margin of labor costs between Toyota and GM will be essentially nothing come 2010. It’s happening. We all wish (except those UAW families) that it had happened sooner.

Point two: even though you’ve got some 100K plus employed by foreign interests in the South, the vast majority of the vehicles goes back to Korea, Japan and Deutschland AG. Dick, they’re foreign. That means the money, too, is mostly shipped back to foreign interests--that is non-American interests, Dick.

Yet you sit wobbly on your throne of sorgum on C-SPAN talking about the purity of capitalism, and how the beauty of it is that some companies rise and succeed and others fail.

But you didn’t point out that you interferred with the market by supporting millions in subsidies to these foreign interests by way of tax abatements(remember, if you believe the UAW, labor is only 10% of the cost of a new car, which means most of the money flows out of the U.S.).

To better understand the gross hypocrisy of Dick Shelby, undoubtedly ghost written for Compuware Chief Peter Karmanos by my former boss, read on. Jason knows how to make a point (and if you somehow see this Pella, Iowa, let me know what you're up to these days).

Today's Hero on Capital Hill: Jeffrey Sachs

2008-12-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

Today’s superhero in the bridge loan debate on Capital Hill is Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia’s Earth Institute. This guy laid down such incredible smack not only some of the idiocy and hypocrisy on the Hill on the current crisis, but put the perspective on Citi Group and other financial giveaways that ballooned into the hundreds of billions of dollars with no strings attached with no calls for bankruptcy. I’m going to find his opening statement when it’s up and post it, it’s phenomenal.

Sachs pointed out something not yet heard that deserves attention: the auto industry is the largest industry in the U.S., and that governments globally are injecting billions into their own country’s auto industry. This guy just kicked ass (sorry Mom). Lucid, forceful, zero pretense . . . Professor Sachs, you Sir, were a surprise and delight of the first order. This guy salutes you.

Mark Zandi: New Detroit Superhero

2008-12-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

This guy should be on everyone’s radar in Detroit, the Midwest and taxpayers in general.

Dr. Zandi broke it down in simplist terms: the bailout loan will be pricey, and could be even as much as $75M to $125M . . . but letting GM, Ford and Chysler slide into oblivion will cost taxpayers much, much more.

It’s that simple.

Detroit Goes to Washington, Take Two

2008-11-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

This is how they should have gone to DC. Why didn't I/we think of this.

Mr. Scott has a bright career in automotive PR should he ever want to leave The Detroit News. I don’t think this would have changed the outcome ulimately, but if would have changed the tenor and welcome from Congress.

Panic in Detroit: Not Just a Bowie Tune

2008-11-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

There’s no way around it. At this point, I’m pretty worried about our future.

As a PR guy who’s been try to help engineer consensus on different companies in the automotive industry for 12 years, it’s been amazing to watch the trajectory of the car companies and suppliers during this time. The last three years have been water dropping on a rock, slowly eroding my confidence in this town’s ability to compete. Circumstances, as they say, allayed their forces against us. But lest we not forget decades of horrible judgment, both of which got us here today.

And then über-industry watcher D. Howes drops this bomb in today's Detroit News.

That Detroit is going down is done; the question is what will it look like on the other side? Will Southeast Michigan look like one enormous sprawl of Canton/Akron, Ohio . . . a broad swath of decrepitude with homes priced as they were in the early 1970s with wages and salaries that match?

Even as GM and Ford continue to grow overseas—in many cases profitably—there’s only so many jobs in Detroit to be had going forward for essentially holding stewardship of the brands, sales/marketing and finances. GM has said that different regions will take ownership of developing global platforms, and North America/Detroit will retain fewer of those (B-cars will come from Korea; large rear drive cars from Australia, et al.). Design jobs, too, will be (are) widely dispersed as GM rightfully has said that designers in local markets should skin these platforms to tailor shapes to local tastes. Most people don't know that the auto industry until very recently was in great shape . . . just not in North America.

Detroit will be still smaller (remember, fifty years ago Detroit proper was 2 million people; today it’s less than half that size). Many of its best and brightest leave to escape the crime and “schools” the city has to offer (don’t believe a white guy from Lake Orion now living in Livonia, read this from my colleague Jacqueline Harrington on what it’s really like to live in Detroit . . . less than hopeful. Yes, she's African-American.)

We can keep working hard, and hope. On our hopes, here are a few of mine:

· The Joseph Goebbels-lookalike/rodent-faced/car industry-hating Henry Waxman goes three rounds of bare-knuckle boxing with local champion John Dingell. Waxman gets waxed by the senior Dingell on C-SPAN. It makes Sports Center. A sweet bronze statue goes up in Palace to honor the event.

· Detroit becomes the lithium-ion capital of the world.

· Gas prices stay under $2/gallon for five more years (I’m betting this won’t happen, get in now, buy me a beer in five years).

· The Japanese continue to mostly build excellent cars with forgettable or downright weird styling that turn people off; as cars become more commoditized and uniformly reliable, styling is what sells and Detroit gets its mojo back.

· The Germans continue to build overpriced cars that aren’t very reliable (I’ve had several; great to drive, terrible to own).

· Detroit comes back . . . property taxes drop . . . businesses move back in to the city . . . suburban people begin buying up the big mansions and turning many of the great downtown neighborhoods back into highly desirable places to live. There remains pockets of slums, but they grow smaller.

Feel free to add yours. If Obama showed us anything, it’s that sometimes big hopes can become bigger realities. While the lights are still on, keep hope alive.

Jim Cramer: GM Really Is Too Big to Fail

2008-11-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

Here’s another reason why GM can’t fail as pointed out by the Mad Money’s Jim Cramer: the U.S. financial system “is riddled with GM [and] GMAC paper.” GM’s bankruptcy would lead to a meltdown in the trust of the U.S. financial system.

Not only are GM’s bonds everywhere, how many people own GM stock without even knowing it in or out of their retirement accounts?

Requiem for Pontiac

2008-10-29T06:27:00.000-07:00

Another cyst erupted on the ailing corpus of Southeastern Michigan.
The hospital my brother Bryan and I were born in closed yesterday. It used to be called Pontiac General. 800 or so people lost their jobs. Poor people who already have a tough time getting medical care will now find it harder to transport themselves to a hospital. Meanwhile, new hospitals are spring up like mushrooms after a hard rain on the fertile soils of the affluent outer ring communities like West Bloomfield and Gross Pointe.

Just as stock markets rise and fall over regular intervals, just as human beings are born, live their lives and die, this year has really questioned my fundamental belief in this area. Pontiac isn’t in Detroit, it’s roughly 20 miles away but they have a lot in common. Pontiac holds a special, bittersweet place in my heart, and not just because I was born there or raised fifteen minutes north of the city in Lake Orion (I think they’re calling that Orion Township now, but no one did when I was there).

I went to high school there for two years at Pontiac Catholic. It’s now called Notre Dame Prep. I’m told it's good now. In 1988, I lead a minor defection of some of the brightest Lake Orion students back to Lake Orion’s public high school (Go Dragons) after my sophmore year there because the teachers were too busy with discipline issues: fights, coke dealers, thuggery, and the like. I got called to the principal’s office a month or so before the end of school. I thought I was in trouble for something dumb I did or said. Rather, he pled that I would convince the Chris Bzdoks of the world to not leave. I told him he failed us and that I was becoming dumber at his school. I was.

Pontiac saw a minor resurgence in the late 1980s and 1990s for having one street with a bunch of hipster bars on it. Like downtown Detroit, it was a cool area that comprised about one percent of the land mass, and yet people had the shortsightedness/gall to call it a “comeback,” meanwhile four blocks away from these tiny enclaves of bars and restaurants were endless blocks of decreptitude and shamefully abysmal high school graduation rates. 20 years later, Pontiac, regrettably, is mostly still an insolvent dump. North Oakland Medical Center's closing downtown is another sign of the same.

Notice that I don’t say “Michigan” is failing. Even though the current recession is hammering the entire country, the West side of the State is not faring anywhere nearly as poorly as the Detroit region. Hell, people in Kalamazoo can send their kids to college for free. How crazy is that . . . free college at any public university or college in the State.

I want to be optimistic about this region. The people here are really nice for the most part. Homes are affordable. There’s a ton of recreational opportunity, our parks are good, and we have the best city water in the U.S. (really, try the tap water everywhere that you go). But our enemployment rate is the worst in the country, our anchor industry is getting absolutely smoked right now, and many smart, affluent young people are leaving in droves (no, make that Civics) for places like Chicago, North Carolina, Arizona, Texas, etc.

Maybe North Oakland Medical Center closing means nothing. But in its dying, I know for certain that my children will not and cannot be born there.

To end on a lighter note, my dear mother Patricia shared a room with another young mother from Pontiac who also had just given birth. My Mom said, “So what did you name your baby?”
“Urethra.”
Stunned, my Mom said, “Oh . . .”
“Yes, well, I heard the doctor say that name and I thought it sounded pretty.”

I guess it could have been worse.

So Why Is Chyrsler in Trouble?

2008-10-28T04:53:00.000-07:00

So why is Chrysler really in trouble? Gas prices, credit crunches and the lack of cash to buy their cars outright (some people still do this; I for one have never had a car payment aside from the $2,900 Tom Terry loaned me in February 1989 for my ’68 Camaro) have hurt plenty.

The bigger reason, aside from Jeep and the (mini)vans: their cars are just not good. How are they not good? In the 1990s, at least they looked good, even if they weren’t terribly reliable and depreciated faster than the stick of gum you put in your mouth. Ok, the 300 was a hit. But if ever a car was a total ripoff of another design, the 300C is it (of a Bentley).

I don’t feel good saying so. I grew up near Auburn Hills, and I want no harm to come to even more people of Southeastern Michigan. But the subject that just gets danced around here in Motown, but is taken for granted essentially everywhere in the country, is that Chrysler doesn’t make great product. Sorry.

Take a look at this article and accompanying list. I show it to illustrate not any particular model of the “Ten Cars Nobody Would Miss if they Vanished”, but the number of Chrysler products on it (interestingly, the Lucerne which is mentioned as a car that should go away was purchased recently by my parents who drive back and forth from Boyne country to Sun City and back every year—they love it. Yeah, they’re in their mid 60s, but guess what, so are tens of millions of other Americans too, and if you look at the list, you’ll see Lucerne isn’t down that much this year).

Among the domestics, Ford and Chevy have developed some extremely competitive products lately. You can shop a Fusion, a Camry, an Accord and a Malibu and personal preference and aesthetics will inform your decision as much as presumed reliability, etc.

But can you really put the Avenger in that category? It’s like looking a three-legged dog: you could love it and give it a home, but you’d always be feel sad for it. And for the owner.

So here's one way out: the Michigan Ecomomic Development Corporation works with State funds to turn Auburn Hills into the lithium-ion Capitol of the world.
How? No clue, but there's a lot of smart guys up there, we have a ton of research universities within one hundred miles that could join forces to supply brain power, and unlike products like the Avenger, the entire world will be clamouring for high-energy, high-power batteries in huge numbers within a decade. Jennifer Granholm, how about you do that with my tax increase?

Will GM Buy Chrysler?

2008-10-16T05:46:00.000-07:00

GM absorbs Chrysler? Desperate times call for desperate measures, and with the Cerberus gang looking to make some money from their acquisition of Chrysler from Daimler a year ago, Cerberus certainly has an incentive to cut their losses.

But what about GM? The Detroit News’ Daniel Howes does a good job of going into why this might not be a crazy as it sounds in the story above.

My brother and I were talking yesterday about this, and asked if it was true that Chrysler's Auburn Hills HQ was designed in the 1990s so that it could turned into a should Chrysler vacate the premises. I assured him that it could . . . but Oakland County would be devastated by such a loss, so what retailers would sign leases there, especially with Somerset five minutes away?http://www.thesomersetcollection.com/

A Tale of Two Launches

2008-10-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

My colleagues and I at work have been arguing for a few years that the days of the big, splashy, event-driven new car launches should probably be relegated to the dustbin of auto PR practice.

For decades, automakers have flown cadres of journalists to expensive locales replete with ribbons of billard-ball smooth road surfaces (southern Spain seems to destination favorite). The reason we think this model is dying is fairly simple: the number of impressions (# of stories written x the number of times those stories are read/seen) doesn’t justify the huge cost, nor is there any tremendous body of evidence that proves that the kind of coverage you earn is much better.
What matters most these days, not shockingly, is the product.

There was a time when marketers could hope to wine and dine journalists into good reviews by appealing to their wanderlust/go-somewhere-warm self-interest , but with the internet trading on its ability to speak truth to power, journalists have an even greater incentive to be very forthcoming and candid about their impressions on new cars. For the most part, they are pretty fair.

In other support for our thesis, Dave Kiley at BusinessWeek weighs in on two recent launches, and gives another reason to keep it local:

"When Ford introduces an all-new F-Series pickup truck to media this month, it is holding the event at a local hotel and its own Romeo, MI proving ground. That may not sound like a big deal. But when Ford launched the Edge SUV in 2007, it flew reporters from all over the country to San Francisco. Mind you…I like this idea, as I often find it a pain in the neck to arrange to go to the West coast just to hear speeches and drive cars that I could drive just as well in Michigan."

His entire post can be read here.

The Future of Turbodiesels (and Gas Turbos)

2008-10-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

Everyday on my way to work, John McElroy’s Automotive Insight story runs at 6:53 a.m. on WWJ newsradio 950AM here in Detroit. John has covered the auto industry forever, and knows automotive like no one else in the world. Today's story, which can be heard here, points out that diesel penetration in Europe has fallen back below 50 percent for the first time in a while, and after talking to automakers, John concludes that diesels have probably topped out, and will likely continue to slowly decline.

He notes that this is happening just as all of the German OEMs introduce 50-state diesels here in the U.S. (for the last several years, most diesels were only compliant with emissions regs in 45 states, the oddballs being California and four Northeastern states that follow California Air Resources Board tailpipe standards).

McElroy’s conclusion is that the prospects for widespread diesel adoption in mainstream passenger cars in the U.S. are less than what they were even one year ago, and that diesels will likely remain in the realm of luxury cars in the U.S. where buyers won’t mind higher fuel costs.

My take: this presumes that diesel will continue to cost more than gasoline. Until September 2004, this wasn’t the case. I’ve no indication that this will reverse course anytime soon, but it’s still necessary for this argument to hold water. Although I just paid $3.17/gallon to fill up my car this morning, but there are so many scenarios whereby crude prices could shoot back up in the next 24 months, I don’t know that I’d make a long-term bet on cheaper oil . . .

If you haven’t driven a modern diesel, like VW and Audi’s TDI vehicles, or the monster BMW 330d with a proper Getrag six-speed manual, I can tell you that they are astounding to drive. Driven back to back with gas engines of the same displacement in the same cars is a night and day experience.

Still, John may be on to something here, at least in Europe. Or not. One of my clients, Honeywell Turbo Technologies, has been suggesting that diesels will continue to grow, albeit slowly, through 2012. But in an interesting twist. They contend that while turbodiesels will grow, the real action is in gasoline turbo-equipped vehicles (e.g. EcoBoost and GM’s 1.4 turbo in the Chevy Cruze). Between 2007 and 2012, Honeywell says that gas turbos will triple their share of the global passenger vehicle market.

Still, if regulations in Europe and the U.S. continue their slide toward zero tailpipe emissions, especially of NOx and PM (soot), the cost of meeting these regs--and the subsequent decrease in diesel's efficiency advantage (plugging up those exhaust streams hurts efficiency), John may be right after all.

The Electrified Car Continuum: Volt vs. Insight

2008-10-06T05:19:00.000-07:00

If the Chevy Volt is what’s next, the new Honda Insight is what’s now. While the stock market and new car sales are tanking, the end of the decade is shaping up to be the most interesting time for powertrain geeks and new car buyers since, well, in a while.

The Volt and the new Insight can rightly be seen as bookends to the “electrified car” continuum over the next few years; the Insight is essentially the 1.3 liter mild hybrid already found in the Civic Hybrid. Unlike the Prius, which can run on electricity alone up to low speeds, the Insight’s gas engine will always power the car with assist from a small electrical motor. The Volt, of course, will run with no gas at all up to forty miles, afterwhich a small (but interestingly, bigger than the Insight’s) 1.4 liter engine charges the battery.

In the future, all automakers will likely offer a broad spectrum of efficient technologies, possibly in the same car, as it the case today in Europe: the entry level models of many B- and C-class cars use small, inexpensive gas motors, while the top of the range typically sports a high-tech, direct-injection turbodiesels.

And this is where I think it gets really interesting . . .how will the “low-end” of the mild hybrids (e.g. Insight-like) compete with the “high end” of the advanced “traditional” powertrains like turbodiesels? Today, at least in Europe, the diesels win by an enormous margin.

The turbodiesels are typically much torquier and more efficient than the mild hybrids, but as Honda comes out with a $19K starting price on the Insight, the turbodiesels might feel added pressure to continue to take cost out. To say nothing of the surge in advanced gas turbos . . .

Powertrain geeks and greenies rejoice, ‘cause these are the good old days.

Reaction to the Volt Launch

2008-09-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

The year was 1972. Then Motorola R&D Chief Martin Cooper told designer Rudy Krolopp that they had to have a portable cell phone prototype in six weeks. Rudy’s response?

“What the hell’s a portable cell phone?”

Ten years and $100 million dollars later, they launched their phone, the $3,995 DynaTac 8000x, affectionately dubbed “the brick.” If only the wealthy could afford it, and calls were a dollar a minute (staggeringly steep in 1983), some critics said it was too expensive to buy, too expensive to use, and the range wasn’t what they would have liked.

So what exactly, was the point?

25 years later, cellular phones would be nearly ubiquitous worldwide, with millions of consumers ditching their traditional home landline phones for their cells (me included).

Fast forward to September 16, 2008: GM unveiled the world’s first extended-range electric vehicle, the Volt, to a curious and sometimes puzzled press corp. Some reporters noted that it likely would be expensive to buy and the electric-only range wasn’t what they would have liked.

Sound familiar?

I wasn’t surprised when people questioned the yet-to-be-announced but oft-speculated $40K price tag. After all, $40K is well above the median price for a new car in this country, and the Volt is a compact, four-passenger car. Even with the $7,500 dollar tax credit, it’s a lot of money for a compact, but not unheard of for tremendous performance (e.g. BMW 135i, Audi A3 3.2).

But I was surprised to see some folks miss the point by citing the Chevy Cruze as being the far more significant car to roll out in 2010. Their argument is that it will be affordable to mostly everyone (relative to the Volt), and therefore it will save more fuel overall as more people are able to buy it (#/units sold x mpg increase = total fuel saved).

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Cruze will be great, and I’ve posted earlier on the virtues of turbocharging everything on this site. The Cruze will be marginally bigger than a the Cobalt, but its 1.4 liter gas turbo will push fuel efficiency into extremely competitive territory; interestingly the Cruze and Volt will share a common body structure, known in GM circles as Delta II. But is the Cruze really more significant than the Volt?

If the future of the auto industry ended in December 2010, this view would stand to reason. But the difference in interpretation of the significance between the view of some and GM is the long-term implications of the Volt, and its ability to begin to write a new chapter in the annals of energy and personal transportation. GM’s Frank Weber and Larry Burns made a very compelling case, and if you missed it, here it is in a nutshell:

· GM extensively studied the range issue, and found that the forty-mile range from the battery is the sweet spot for most U.S. consumers. Roughly 80 percent of drivers could commute without using a drop of gasoline;

· In the next iteration of the Volt, the electric-only range would still be forty miles, the aim will be to reduce size, mass and cost from the battery pack (keep Motorola’s “brick” in mind), which will bring down the cost of the car;

· For the next iteration, and subsequent extended-range electric vehicles, stir and repeat.

I thought they made this pretty clear. Thoughtful people ought to agree that the implications for weaning ourselves off oil for personal transportation are staggering . . . no, not by 2010, but neither will it take fifty years (keeping in the mind the adoption/development curve of the cell phone).

As I wrote after watching the unveiling of the production Volt, I think the Volt will be remembered in coming years as much for what it will represent—the all-too-rare game-changer ushering in the electrification of the automobile and the overcoming of our complete reliance on diminishing oil reserves for personal transportation. GM is one of our clients, but I still really believe this.

As Burns pointed out, by 2030, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities where vehicle speeds average 12-13 miles per hour. Using the tech represented in the Volt, close to none of these would need gas or diesel to drive around town. No gas. No diesel. No idling. Think about it.

Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear what people think about this.

Volt Scores Big $7,500 Tax Credit

2008-09-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

The verdict is in: the Volt will qualify for a $7,500 tax credit, as reported by Dave Kiley over at BusinessWeek. While $10K would have been better (the Li-Ion battery pack alone has been estimated to cost this much), $7,500 helps GM put generation one extended range hybrids into the hands of consumers.

This is a big deal, especially for people in upper-middle and higher income brackets. If it were simply a deduction, it would mean a lot less. For the difference between the two, read Kiplinger’s explanation here.

In other Volt news, I have a post going up on the GMnext blog soon about how so many journalists missed the big picture last Tuesday on the Volt’s coming out party.

Report from the Volt unveil . . . very interesting

2008-09-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t heard, the production version of the Volt was officially unveiled as part of the GM Centennial celebration. I spent the day with reporters obeserving their observations.

If you want to know what it was like to be there in person, and gleans some offhand media reactions, read the post following the CEO's here.

And You Thought the Big Three Were in Trouble?

2008-09-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

Wall Street Firms are making Detroit's car companies look . . . less bad.

The Craziest Car I Ever Drove

2008-09-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

As an auto flack, my job occassionally gives me the opportunity to drive really cool, new and interesting cars. I've driven fuel cell vehicles (very quiet), a ton of turbodiesels unavailable for sale in North America (but a few are here, I helped Honeywell petition EPA for the waivers to register them here), Australian gas turbo Fords, the EV1 in DC in the late 1990s when I with USCAR, but none can top the utterly ridiculous vehicle here.

I few years ago, a client wanted to see his Delahaye featured in AutoWeek. I wanted to be published in a car magazine, as this was my dream all through college. We both lucked out. The owner, all round cool car nut with the means to have a warehouse full of cars, Gordon Wangers of AMCI/Jim Wangers fame, told me a few years ago that the car had been traded.

Here is the brief report on driving a 70-year-old, now $400,000 LeMans winner in rush hour traffic:

Driving the 1937 Delahaye Type 135M Drophead Coupe

Kill CAFE Rules and Save Taxpayers $25 billlion

2008-09-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

In a thought-provoking opinion piece yesterday, this Wall Street Journal article by Holman Jenkins offers a novel—and to my mind theoretically (but not politically) practical way of saving taxpayers $25 billion+ dollars in Federal loan guarantees:

"For a sum small compared to their revenues but large in relation to their market caps, the Detroit auto makers were all over the two conventions. Their lobbyists had something to sell -- a plea for $50 billion in federal loans. Congress practically owes us this money, Ford, GM and Chrysler argue -- because Congress slammed us with new fuel mileage mandates that will cost us $100 billion to meet.

John McCain caved. The White House is in the process of caving. Barack Obama didn't need to cave. But before rushing to pass the legislation, there's an easy way to save $50 billion or whatever part of these loans wouldn't be paid back: Just repeal the fuel economy rules."

To note: I say in my title here that it's $25 billion, the Journal quotes $50 billion. Smart $ is on the former.

The corollary, according to this classic by my favorite contemporary economist, Greg Mankiw from Harvard, is that rather than burden the OEMs and consumers with CAFE rules that just don’t work, is to permenently raise fuel taxes above where they are now. The following from Mankiw is a must read:

Raise the Gas Tax

For Auto Supplier PR Executives

2008-09-10T07:15:00.000-07:00

Can your PR agency explain what this picture is and how every component here works? We can because we work for manufacturer of both the variable geometry turbo and the engine manufacturer.

Our shop in Detroit is a curious bunch. We run the gamut from former Chicago-based consumer marketing PR-types to more B2B auto technology/policy industy PR strategists (I fall into the latter).

Interestingly, our growth n the last five years has been built primarily on getting ahead of the curve on using social media (i.e. the internet) to creatively engage consumers for companies, but we've also added clients on the more traditional auto supplier B2B side of the house . . . the difference being that Weber Shandwick is more global than most of our clients, let alone our competition, and having capabilities worldwide is a quickly growing need as the supply base continues to consolidate. Here's us in a nutshell:

The Weber Shandwick Automotive Practice Site

Where Should the OEMs Be Placing Big Bets?

2008-09-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

Why is GM spending billions on “far-out” technology like extended-range hybrid vehicles in the midst of such industry and market turmoil? Because the global trends that are shaping the industry—and society—demand that leaders lead.

This "leaders lead" talk doesn’t jive much right with auto cognoscenti because GM has had a tough time as of late (but let's be clear: so has pretty much everyone else, including Toyota, whose coronation may put on hold in light of lowered sales/revenue forecasts). Early indications are that the industrialized West is sliding into a low-to-now growth period; next year could be some really tough sledding for mature markets with emerging markets still keeping the lights on.

But those trends are alarming, and in spite of tremendous pressure to shoot the moon with the next product cycle, GM, along a few others, are looking well beyond the current market downturn and next product cycle.

In the following link from the GMnext blog, click on the presentation at the bottom that shows why the big picture includes much bigger issues than today's credit crunch, housing decline. If intelligent people don’t find the global trends frightening, we may all be in big trouble.

Feeling Gravity's Pull

Autoextremist: PR Won't Work for Detroit?

2008-09-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/

The ever delicate and nuanced Peter DeLorenzo essentially says to Detroit OEMs: Give up on your PR efforts . . . you lost the image war. As usual, his reasoning is on very solid ground, the idea being that amazing products will help cure what ails GM, Ford and Chrysler. That's right. But he's wrong (sorry Peter).

But to say that communications and marketing just don't/won't work is folly. I offer as Exhibit A a brand that makes high-quality, reliable, intrinsically good products, but doesn't communicate its value very effectively as measured by sales . . . Acura.

Mercedes-Benz, on the other hand, outsold Acura in August, as they do most months/years, but hasn't remotely approached Acura's reliability in recent years. I'm aware the reliability is but one reason people buy cars (especially luxury cars that no one needs); design, performance, resale, et al. all count too. But when you ask most real people what is meant by a "good" car, they'll say "high quality" or "reliable."

Sorry to say this Peter, but the brand still counts for something, and Mercedes proves the point. And brand is another word for the intangibles. Some of those intangibles are not consciously communicated, and not all can be helped by PR and marketing, no argument.

But I fully appreciate and mostly agree with the spirit and direction of Delorenzo's rant. Autoextremist has always been a provocative, thoughtful read and product, product, product is still the automotive equavalent of location, location, location.

Should Tier 1 Auto Suppliers Blog?

2008-09-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

At this point, I don't see why, but convince me otherwise. Here are a few of my reasons:

Their customers are too few. Suppliers talk to a fairly short list of engineering, planning and purchasing people. Traditional PR works better unless . . .
You're a massive supplier capable of actually affecting (i.e. have lots of $ to spend) consumer demand for a particular technology. ABS brakes, which were lobbied behind (and if front of) the scenes with NHTSA, and diesels (jury is still out, diesels are great but not inexpensive) are two that come to mind from Christmas Past and Present.
Unless you've got a highly differentiated product, and can hope to own a category like safety, fuel economy or in-car entertainment, you won't be able to convince enough consumers that your site is worth going to several times a week, or more.

Would love to hear what you think.

How Do Blogs Work in Automotive?

2008-09-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

Simple: talk about stuff that real people care about. Like turbocharged Camaros, for instance:

Turbo Camaro . . . Why Not Turbocharge Everything?

Success with this particular post was fairly modest, but it's a good reminder that a. it bears repeating, companies can't really control the conversation--and shouldn't try to; and b. people are still really, really sensitive to engine cylinder count in this country (in Europe, average specific power output is something like 80 hp/liter, in the U.S., it's . . . less), but this may be changing with the volitity of gas prices.

Can they work? The anwer is yes . . . as demonstrated by der überblog that isn't just a model for corporate blogs in auto, but corporate blogs period:
GM Fastlane. Of course, GM is a Weber Shandwick client; no, we didn't come up with Fastlane; and no, we don't always drink the Kool Aid because our job is help counsel companies on how things will be perceived by, again, real people, which GM is doing a better job of and has for the last several years. Yes I really think so . . .

The "Efficacy Cycle" of the Press Release, Part I

2008-09-03T10:42:00.001-07:00

When I got my start in public relations, I worked for USCAR, a very interesting technology consortium made up of engineers and R&D types on loan from Chrysler, GM and Ford, whose job it was to collaboratively research advanced technologies in the pre-competitive stage of development. Most recently, USCAR’s battery consortium made some news by awarding $8.2 million to a batter suppler to further develop lithium ion batteries.

Back then, we were issuing several releases per year, and going the normal route of pitching individual reporters at the key automotive trades, as well as issuing on the auto list of PRNewswire. This being in the earlier days of the Internet, online pickup was modest.

By 2000 or so, many PR practicioners, including me, were growing wary of the avalance of releases issued by companies of various size and importance, and many became, for lack of a better term, anti-release. The idea was: the more you said, the less they remembered, and worse, your credibility could be harmed if editors and reporters kept getting inundated with inane, non-news releases from companies starving for attention and coverage. We felt a certain pride—and still do—by having the nominal fortitude to tell clients, “Regrettably, that’s not news, don’t do a release on that.”

Today, the pendulum has swung back, and not entirely for the right reasons. One client recently had their IR folks audit their company vs. competitors, and one of the metrics was “# of releases.” One, but not all, of the reasons this mattered was that as auto blogs, news sites, etc. developed this nearly unquenchable appetitite for content (especially video, but that’s another story), releases were getting “picked up” online, and these hits “counted” towards media coverage targets, and boosted share of voice (Factiva’s definition is as good as any). But the IR guys seemed interested not just in the resulting coverage, but just the raw volume of releases issued as a surrogate for “media” activity.

The implicit debate, of course, isn’t limited to automotive, but it just happens to be top of mine these days for some of our auto clients. I’d love to hear what you think though, whether you’re inside or outside of auto.

It All Started with a '68 Camaro . . .

2008-09-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

In 1989, I went into debt to the tune of $2,900 in order to buy a canary yellow, "ten-footer" '68 Camaro (you know, looked wicked from ten feet away) during my senior year of high school in Lake Orion, Michigan. The guy I bought it from worked in a now-forgotten Corvette speed shop in Troy, and had done Wendy (that's what I called her, named after The Descendents' remake of the Beach Boys classic of the same title) the great service of swapping out her peashooter 250 c.i. straight-six for the hi-po Corvette engine from 1979, the 220-hp L-82. Don't knock the QuadraJet (had an iguana named Q-Jet; you could say I was pretty well-obessessed with small block Chevys).

I loved Wendy . . .and so did the little kids across the street, who started a club that met under my parents' bushes to argue about the coolest cars, known as the Hot Rod Club, and wait for me as came home from school everyday. While other kids got trips or big checks for graduation, I got a new exhaust, including headers that didn't really fit right because they were for the automatic . . . and I had the Saginaw three-speed stick shift (you know where first gear is normally? That was reverse). I grew up in a GM family. I've loved cars all my life, and have had a few good ones (1993 Beretta GTZ, yes really and a 1997 M3 Coupe) and a few less so (1980 CJ-7 when I lived in Colorado).

Some years later, both Wendy and Q-Jet were shipped to my cousins in Indy.
Wendy was completely rebuilt and later sold. Q-Jet, well, was not.

Fast forward nearly twenty years. Today, I co-manage a growing automotive practice at Weber Shandwick, one of the biggest PR firms in the world. I'm launching this blog to lend some (hopefully) unique color commentary on the fast-changing automotive industry in which we live and work (when you live in Detroit, you do live the auto industry, some of us more than others). I hope you enjoy, and maybe even find something here of interest for you. So buckle up (have to say this because my Dad a safety czar of sorts) and have fun.