Automakers Make Art of Anti-Promotion
When the top execs from multinational corporations go to Congress hat in hand for multi-billion dollar bailout money, their pitch is a bit less effective when they’ve stepped off private jets before landing on Capitol Hill.
That’s one of the lessons the CEOs from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler learned this week about the fine art of poor promotion. It’s not the only lesson they should be contemplating in their corporate suites, but it’s a starting point for a reality check they sorely need to make before the next round of negotiations.
General Motors and Chrysler both produced TV spots projecting the ominous consequences of the demise of their respective companies as we know them. But there was a curious and striking discrepancy in those ads: Chrysler estimated that the failure of the auto industry would have an impact - directly or indirectly - on 4.5 million American jobs, while GM put the number at 13 million.
A GM spokesperson couldn’t readily account for that mathematical divergence. Figures from the Center for Automotive Research, assuming a cessation of production by the Big Three automakers next year, projected job losses of nearly 7.2 million through 2011. A CNN story about the ads indicated that GM had thrown everything from the obvious auto supply chain jobs to car washes in its macro-economic arithmetic. Presumably their logic here is that only people with new cars figure it’s worth paying to have them washed.
When the airlines get in line for their share of the bailout bonanza, maybe they’ll figure peanut farmers into the mix. The broadcast networks could point to an impact on every conceivable retail product made in America. And Silicon Valley could foretell the collapse of the country’s infrastructure.
The arrogance of claiming the use of private jets as corporate policy for security’s sake is a slap in the face to taxpayers who will foot the bill for the bailout money Detroit is seeking. But their Washington visitations are just a $20,000 drop in a very large, leaky bucket. Playing fast and loose with figures in a TV ad isn’t anything new, but in the context of prophesying the downfall of the republic, it is an insult to the collective intelligence.
If they didn’t think about jet-pooling, they should have thought about presenting a consistent story in the public plea for funds in TV ads that certainly cost them more than the round-trips from Detroit. In both cases, there is an incalculable cost in lost credibility.
But as H.L. Mencken once observed, nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
