Advice to carmaker CEOs driving hybrids to DC (instead of private jets)
“If they were very smart, the CEOs would drive unreleased, next-generation cars that get 100 MPG. They’d stop in a half-dozen towns along the way and invite a newspaper editorial board writer to ride shotgun for a dozen miles. They’d update their status on Twitter. They’d write a few posts for the company blog. They’d shoot video on a Flip camera and talk about how they screwed up at their first appearance, how they’re selling their fleet of corporate jets, and their plans for the future. If they behave like real people instead of CEO machines, they might arrive in D.C. backed by some pretty good word of mouth. In other words, they would prove that in these recessionary times they know what it means to be entrepreneurial, not imperial.”
Charlie Jones
on 02 Dec 08You need a car that gets 100MPG in order to do that :)
Grant
on 02 Dec 08That just makes too much sense for CEO’s who (I’m guessing) probably have secretaries print out their email…
Good ideas though.
Guan Yang
on 03 Dec 08100 mpg is really the best the US auto industry can get in a concept car? The former chairman of VW drove to his final board meeting in a 235 mpg car.
Zack
on 03 Dec 08Are electricians buying F150s and grandparents buying Buicks really going to get excited about CEOs screwing around with Flip cameras and Twitter? It’s a great idea to use the web to hold conversations with your customers when the web is where your customers are. To assume that this is the right idea for every business is myopic.
Also, what happens when that still-experimental 100MPG hybrid breaks down halfway to Washington? Not going to help the old message so much. A production hybrid is a much safer bet.
Anonymous Coward
on 03 Dec 08Chances are the CEOs will never read this excellent advice. That is sad.
Will
on 03 Dec 08If the Big 3 actually had 100 mpg concept cars to drive to Washington, they almost certainly wouldn’t be in this mess as deeply as they are now.
Steve Turner
on 03 Dec 08Zack:
If you look at the story, they suggest talking to newspapers and other local media all along the trip route as well. No one would suggest that the web is the only way to talk to your customers, especially with something as mass market as cars.
Not to mention the fact of course that intimate web conversations seem to be newsworthy themselves these days (witness the articles about Twitter after the Mumbai attacks). And the media is a target audience of web marketing now anyway—what you do online will be reused by traditional media as well.
As for the “experimental” car… you’d like to think they could actually iron out those problems, but I think the thought and intention is what counts in this sort of action—it’s a PR stunt still, if an earnest and meaningful one.
Terry Sutton
on 03 Dec 08@Zack: Point missed. Blogs and twitter, etc, are esoteric, without question. However, they get word (and eventually buzz) out to the public quicker than anything else.
Additionally: is it that your electrician and grandmother don’t ‘get’ new media, or that new media isn’t getting to them?
New media is esoteric because people haven’t yet found foolproof ways to get into the hands of untechnical late-adopters.
Terry Sutton
on 03 Dec 08ps: This may be shortsighted (as I often am), but I think the whole American car industry mess is coming down to one issue: design.
Your cars just aren’t nice. The trucks are ok, I assume the people who like Cadillac still like them, people who need hummers will continue to need hummers….etc…but the cars are really terrible.
They’re poor on gas, ugly to look at, they have no features, etc etc. We’ve all seen the episode of the Simpsons where Homer redesigns a car (and bankrupts) a company – and point taken. But I really think that a nice looking car with nice features could really shake up the industry.
Build something that at least looks like you put some thought into it.
Go Speed Racer
on 03 Dec 08I like this similar sentiment:
http://www.graduatedtaste.com/2008/11/20/if-richard-branson-ran-gm/
Anonymous Coward
on 03 Dec 08But I thought CEO’s travel in Private Jets to reduce their interaction with the public, and therefore reduce the chances of getting mugged, or shot.
Josh
on 03 Dec 08Following
with
—is this not a non-sequitur to anyone else?I don’t know; I call shenanigans. It sounds fun and wistful, like an 80s-style getting-stuff-done montage. And like an 80s-style getting-stuff-done montage, it works for about 30 seconds:
- they don’t have any unreleased, next-generation 100 mpg cars, - the newspaper guy would ask one question about where they’ve been hiding these super-efficient cars the entire time and the CEOs would have to jump out at 60 mph, getting significant asphalt-burn in the process, - the Twitter and blog feeds would be drowned out by the cacophony of everyone else on the internet scrutinizing every single word they said, so it would be written by PR anyway.
Regarding the last point—humanization goes both ways. If the car co. CEOs are willing to get in the trenches, we would all have to be willing to see them as human for any useful dialogue or buzz to be formed. Easier said than done.
All in all, though, it sounds like CEOs suspending their campaign to return to Washington.
Ravi
on 03 Dec 08I dont know if any of those ‘imperial’ CEOs are going to read.
Probably you need to update this on Twitter, shoot video on a Flip camera a, talk about how the are still screwing up in these recessionary times and put it on youtubeCJ Curtis
on 03 Dec 08A lot of these suggestions were actually the point of the leading story on ABC News this morning.
It’s all posturing anyway…not only by the CEOs, but by the government. They freely handed banks over $700M, but now they’re acting all noble and “for the people” by demanding that the carmakers give them a “plan of action” before they give them an additional $30M. Way too little too late.
What's a Twitter? Where's my toolbox?
on 03 Dec 08I agree with Zack. Twittering or updating a journal on some social media platform is going to pander to a small audience who isn’t even the target customer or market.
This is pie in the sky blogging with all the substance of my bulldog’s morning present.
Greg
on 03 Dec 08They did not even have to go that far.
Fly the private jets to Philly. Have one of their economy cars waiting at the airport. Call a press meeting on the Capitol steps. Film theses guys driving in for their appearance before Congress.
Oh, and be ready to explain how $25B will make them profitable again…
Greg
on 03 Dec 08Oh, and part of leadership is showmanship.
Lt. Col. Charles R. Codman: You know General, sometimes the men don’t know when you’re acting.
Patton: It’s not important for them to know. It’s only important for me to know.
-from the movie “Patton”
Matt
on 03 Dec 08Real people use twitter and flip cameras?
Uh yeah, ok…
Jason Armstrong
on 03 Dec 08After hearing more (NPR report yesterday) about how Obama, his staff and volunteers used the web, social media and networking to drastically evolve (revolutionize?) the way elections are run and won, it’s very exciting to see how the “real world” is being shaped by the web and associated technologies.
The quote above posted by Matt is definitely what the CEOs should have done, but sadly won’t.
We’re moving from a technophobic old guard (Bush, McCain (who has never used a computer), et al) to the new guard who see the power of the democratization of the web and how it educates people and rallies them around various causes.
Obama and his team have said they want to carry the dynamic they used during the campaign forward into the presidency and use it get the best ideas possible and mobilize the general public to action!
This is a fantastic and (I think) unforeseen, yet very positive byproduct of an Obama administration.
I am extremely excited and very much looking forward to seeing where this goes!
Daniel Draper
on 04 Dec 08The problem is that very often big company CEO’s are not good entrepreneurs and just as often entrepreneurs are not good at running big companies. The really successful people are those that are good at both.
Eric
on 04 Dec 08“If they were very smart”... they wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
George
on 05 Dec 08“Real people” post on Twitter? Huh?
CJ Curtis
on 05 Dec 08A couple days ago, there was an auto union guy commenting on the CEOs driving in hybrids to DC. He said something to the effect of “They absolutely have the right to fly wherever they’re going. They are very busy men.”
I agree wholeheartedly that these guys are incredible schmucks, but he’s got a point, don’t you think? Two hours in a jet versus eight hours in a car?
Making a statement about their products and their “willingness” to work with the government is one thing…but day to day travel in a car? I think it’s more practical to ask that they stay in reasonably priced hotels and keep their room service bill down as opposed to regulating their mode of travel.
Trans Texas
on 09 Dec 08All of the US Car companies got funding from our government to make higher mileage cars back in the 90s. Shamlessly, Toyota wasn’t invited to participate, and fearing we would make a great gas mileage car, came out with the Prius. The Partnership came out with a car from each of the three car companies, and the worst got 72 miles to the gallon. The car companies promised to have them in showrooms by 2001, but by then…. it got the axe. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/view/7.html Toyota, however continued to properly promote the Prius, and Detroit continued to make only the highly profitable SUV type cars. Blame is due with both the politicians and the car companies.
Trans Texas
on 09 Dec 08Imagine how the Big three could have turned their time in front of the public to promote their technology. It would have been nice to see them all bragging about their mileage, but instead we are just happy to see them arrive without a breakdown. This should have been a way to promote their high mileage hybrids, but after 15 years of invention, an increase of 2 miles to the gallon is all the Detroit engineers can squeeze out of their hybrids. Mazda gets 14 mpg increase.
It appears they don’t want to succeed, for some reason. Could it be that the repairs business would suffer?
CJ Curtis
on 09 Dec 08Uh oh…don’t talk about the repair business failing. That might be another $50M out of our pockets.
The more I think about it, the more I think just screw them all. Let them fail. The government is looking at this bailout as a 3-4 month life raft. Ten years of declining quality, declining market share, special interest politics and multi-million dollar deals for worthless company execs…fixed in three months? Yeah right.
This discussion is closed.