By Peter M. De Lorenzo
Detroit. Since schools across the country are cycling through mid-winter and even spring breaks, wouldn’t it be nice if the auto industry took a break too? Just came to a screeching halt for a week? Think of all of the rampant mediocrity that could be purged, all of the incessant hand-wringing about sales numbers and share that could be dispensed with? And wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take the time, sit back and let the lingering hangovers from two auto shows finally fade into the woodwork, just in time to suit up for Geneva?
Yeah, like that would ever happen.
In lieu of that, we have the usual rumbling, stumbling machine that encompasses the modern auto industry grinding away, full speed ahead. Where to no one really knows for sure, it just is and it just does, sort of like an industrial Forrest Gump.
So consider this mid-winter brake (spelling intended), a momentary pause in the swirling maelstrom of chaos that fuels this business to greatness, or something a good bit less than that, as it applies.
The big news this week is that GM has announced that Tim Mahoney will be the global chief marketing officer for Chevrolet, a new position. Mahoney will also be something titled “global GM operations leader,” reporting to Alan Batey, vice president of U.S. sales and service and interim global chief marketing officer. (There’s a mouthful.)
Mahoney had been chief product and marketing officer at Volkswagen of America since May 2011, where he presided over some excellent and noteworthy advertising and marketing work. As in some pretty memorable stuff. He also had had stints at Subaru and Porsche prior to that.
This all sounds well and good, and I consider Mahoney to be somewhat of an inspired choice – at least on paper – unfortunately in this business I can assure you that the “on paper” factor doesn’t count for much. The much bigger question is will he be able to transcend the quagmire that has come to define marketing at GM? Because I can’t think of a better term to describe the inbred intransigence that defines GM’s marketing function.
How has it gotten to this point? Followers of this website can recall a number of things I’ve written about leading up to this moment in time, but in case you forgot some of the salient details let me remind you of a few.
First of all, Alan Batey is a sales guy, through and through, and the fact remains that very few in this business – like maybe a handful – with a sales background have ever managed to function as Chief Marketing Officers with any degree of success. Even though Alan was brought here by Mark Reuss (after Mark had worked with him while running Holden), there’s no question that CMO is not in his skill set.
Not surprisingly there’s a reason Batey is an “interim” CMO at GM, but not for the reasons you’d expect. Normal reasoning would suggest that Batey isn’t qualified to be a CMO, and that would be a perfectly logical explanation given what we know. But the real reason for the “interim” tag is that GM’s illustrious blunderbuss of a CEO, Dan “Captain Queeg” Akerson fancies himself as the all-knowing, all-powerful Oz, err, esteemed leader of all he surveys, and knowing what great advertising consists of is just one of the many talents he’s accrued in his brief dictatorship. (The other being, of course, his immense encyclopedic knowledge of the product and the automobile industry itself, but I digress.)
And the fact that GM marketing was royally screwed up long before Akerson raised his hand at the infamous board meeting when he was handed the CEO job (with all of the careful consideration and ceremonial gravitas of a promotion from cash register to night manager at Dunkin’ Donuts, I might add) doesn’t help in the least.
Even though it has been decimated over the last few years by bankruptcy and uproarious change, GM marketing has long been a fiefdom rife with cliques to rival any bad high school scenario you could conjure up, and there are still enough moles and insular insiders running amuck in GM marketing right now perfectly capable of messing with things if they don’t feel it’s going the right way.
Consider the example of Joel Ewanick, for instance.
(Not that Akerson would care a damn bit about GM’s marketing moles. Despite the official word intimating that Ewanick was up to no good - conveniently ginned-up by the secretive internal security troops known as Those Who Control Such Things at GM, something akin to The Adjustment Bureau or a rogue element in the College of Cardinals - the real reason he was exited from the company is that Akerson flat didn’t like him. And much of that was due to the fact that Ewanick was front and center in the media – a lot – and when it comes right down to it Akerson doesn’t like it when any GM executive finds him or herself in the media spotlight more than he is. It just doesn’t sit well with him. It pisses him off royally, in fact. After all, he’s running the damn ship and he’s the smartest guy in the room, in case anyone needs reminding.)
So here we have the earnest Mr. Mahoney walking into a job where 1. His immediate boss (and “interim” CMO let’s not forget) is a sales guy. 2. The marketing troops already in place will monitor his every move reporting to TWCST at regular intervals. 3. He will be responsible for marketing one of the biggest single car accounts in the world in a huge year when Chevrolet will be introducing the Silverado pickup (amongst other significant intros), simply the most pivotal launch for GM since, well, since the last new pickup was introduced. 4. He has to get a brand-new ad theme – “Find New Roads” – seeded into the consumer consciousness for Chevrolet and probably a rehash of an old one for the upcoming launch of the Silverado. 5. The big boss has now unofficially assumed the role of CMO when the mood suits him and he feels like meddling in the whole “advertising thing.”
As David Spade would say, “Yikes.”
And, as if all of that weren’t enough, GM has lost almost six full points of market share in the U.S. since 2007. And therein lies Mr. Mahoney’s biggest challenge. Despite probably the most desirable lineup in GM history – including some stellar market entries from Chevrolet – GM’s market share has plummeted downward in an inexorable slide that seems to show no signs of abating.
And since Chevrolet is the straw that stirs the drink for GM, Mr. Mahoney has been hired to fix it. All of it. I’m sure he wouldn’t have it any other way, too, because that’s what people at this level live and breathe for, at least right now while the challenge is big and the sky is blue and the possibilities are endless, anyway.
But this isn’t the same company that in its heyday routinely shook up the market with dynamic cars and even more provocative advertising and promotional forays. Not by a long shot, in fact.
No, this is a car company formerly known as The Juggernaut, an American industrial icon that was forced into bankruptcy in the most humiliating fashion, having to be bailed out by the U.S. Treasury. And the American taxpayers out there in “ConsumerVille” have not forgotten about that fact, no matter how hard GM has tried.
So I would say Mr. Mahoney has the toughest marketing job in the country, right now, right this very minute. And I can also tell you what Mahoney has been promised to sign up for this new gig too.
He has been told that GM is all about change, that it’s a Brand-New Day, that CEO Dan Akerson has the clear-eyed vision of an outsider with meaningful, big-time experience that transcends the moribund automobile industry as practiced here in the Motor City. That Dan Akerson is the visionary who will lead a rejuvenated General Motors to the Promised Land made up of equal parts jaw-dropping profits, happy shareholders, worthwhile stock options and appropriately competitive compensation.
He has also been told that Chevrolet is on the cusp of a renaissance, with a veritable orgy of new products, each one ultra-competitive or at the top of every segment it competes in, complete with a new advertising theme just ripe for his touch. And that Chevrolet will be a global force to be reckoned with; it’s only just a matter of time.
And he has been promised that the internal marketing team and, of course, the involved advertising agencies are in place poised and at the ready to help him power the Chevrolet brand to historic new heights.
But the reality of the situation is remarkably different.
Memo to Mr. Mahoney: GM is made up of warring fiefdoms, sub-fiefdoms and factions, the most glaring of which is Captain Queeg and the GM Board of Directors vs. everybody else in the company. And his agenda – which is rubber-stamped by the most incompetent Board of Directors at work in Corporate America – is a lethal cocktail made up of hubris, delusional thinking and practiced condescension, with the stated goal of returning GM to dominance in the automotive world, or crowning Akerson as the greatest CEO in the free world, whichever comes first.
Note that there’s nothing in there that says, “we will build the best cars and trucks in the world” (Akerson has given lip-service to that statement even though he has no idea what it means) because that quest is left to the people who are actually engaged in doing the real work of the company, those True Believers in Engineering, Product Development and Design who have kept GM in the game right up until this point in time.
My advice to Mr. Mahoney? It’s pretty simple, actually.
Take everything that has been said to you with a 400-lb. grain of salt. Nothing at the RenCen is as it seems, and those friendly smiles and back pats won’t last long. There are people there who genuinely want you to succeed. Good people. Real People. Some of the best people you’ll ever meet.
And they almost add up to the number of people who couldn’t care less whether you succeed or not, the ones who only care how the hiring of you ultimately affects them.
And remember one more thing, the average tenure in CMOVille is 20 to 36 months.
Enjoy the ride, for as long as it lasts.
And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.