Marketing.

Yep. Ford’s chair drove all the way from Detroit to D.C. in an Escape Hybrid. Wow. There’s a PR move, if ever I’ve seen one. ‘Course, it would have been ever so much more effective if he’d done it a couple of weeks ago, instead of flying in with his corporate jet. “I just drove in from Detroit, and boy is my butt sore,” makes ever so much better a punchline than “I just flew in from Detroit, and boy is my stewardess tired.” Oh, and the Big Three CEOs have offered to take $1 a year for a salary! (No word on stock options and other incentives.) And they’ll give up the corporate jets! (Now we’re talkin’ pain!)

It’s interesting to see the Big Three get hip to appearances, and start doing something to make it at least look as if they’re trying to be contrite. Pity they didn’t come up with anything more than smoke and mirrors for a plan.

The simple fact is that none of the Big Three have a ghost of a chance of survival until they deal with the fact that their costs of manufacture are $1,500 higher than their competition.

Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Honda all build cars here, and build them better, faster and cheaper. Why? They don’t have unions dictating how many cars to build, how many people to keep on the job, and what models must be built, regardless of demand. Which is exactly what the unions have done to the Big Three. Oh, and they also put a gun to the heads of GM, Ford, and Chrysler as to wages, health care benefits, and pensions.

Oddly enough, I think marketing IS the solution. Just not in the way that it’s been used so far.

What needs to happen is that the Big Three CEOs need to man up, and come up with plans that address the real issues – specifically, the cost of manufacture. Once they are ready to propose the tough moves, they need to then market the plan – to Congress, to the UAW, to the shareholders and investor community, to the dealers, and suppliers…then ultimately to their customers.

When you present a plan that spreads the pain out among all the stakeholders, and that sharing that pain means the ultimate survival for the companies, and therefore the stakeholders. In the big picture, this works. On the smaller, more personal scale, it means that some will lose their jobs. Some will see their pensions and benefits shrink. Some will see their salaries cut. Everyone will feel pain. If you can use marketing to sell the wisdom of this plan to everybody, there’s a chance that restoring the principles of capitalism to the Big Three will save them. No guarantees. No promises. Because when you invoke free market capitalism, you live and die on supply and demand – not union rules, jobs banks, and Soviet-era 5 year plans.

Can marketing save the Big Three. Yes – if they market a plan that works. Otherwise, all the CEOs in the world driving all the hybrids in the world won’t save them.

What we’ve got here (with apologies to Strother Martin) is a failure to communicate…the truth.

And it’s that failure – and the framing/spin/mendacity that’s going on that is so bloody fascinating. To wit…

Detroit would have us believe that if we don’t hand them our wallets, It Will Be The End of America As We Know It.™ They insist that only an immediate cash infusion will stay the wolves from the door, save the farm, and give Tiny Tim that operation he so desperately needs. Of course, they also insist that said bailout come with no strings attached. After all, THEY are the Captains of Industry, and THEY have no intention of abandoning the helm in this Time Of Crisis.™

Problem is, they are are (collectively) to piloting their companies through these treacherous economic shoals what Joseph Hazelwood was to the Exxon Valdez.

“Um…Captain? Wake up…we seem to have hit something.”

“What’d we hit?”

“Um…Alaska.”

Do you really want to write a blank check to the auto industry and give it to the same clowns that ran the industry aground? I didn’t think so.

Any reasonable person would see that this is a bad idea. You know it. I know it. Congress knows it. The auto execs know it. So what’s a poor, overpaid, clueless auto company exec to do?

Marketing…to the RESCUE!

The chairman of the Big Three (and their minions) swept into Washington this week, with stories of gloom and doom. Their leitmotif was that they MUST have the money before Thanksgiving, or Disaster is Certain. Workers (read: VOTERS) will Lose Their Jobs! The Domino Effect will lay waste to the American Economy! A Worldwide Great Depression will follow! We will never recover! Millions of Jobs will be Lost Forever!

In a performance worthy of Professor Marvel, the Big Three honchos worked the crowd like a carnival huckster preying on a bunch of Kansas farmhands.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

But we must pay attention. First it was SecTreas Paulson, selling us a bill of goods about the finance system. “We need $700 Billion NOW, to avoid another Great Depression! Don’t bother with the details! Trust me! We’ll buy up all the bad loans!” Of course, now we find out that it was bait and switch – no bad loans need apply. Nobody knows how the $700 Billion is being spent. But the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt tango worked. Next came the rest of the (mis)management supplicants, wailing and gnashing their sharp teeth, looking for a handout. But now, cynicism has set in, and it’s getting harder to stir the populace into a froth worthy of your neighborhood Starbucks.

So they cut a commercial.

The car execs have to do SOMEthing. (That is, something OTHER than actually address the problems at hand. Actually FIXing things would require bold moves like taking their companies through bankruptcy, jettisoning bloated union contracts, unsustainable health care plans, exorbitant pension funds, then cutting product lines, brands, and bloated dealer networks. That is something they WON’T do.)

The dirty little secret here is that the Big Three are behaving like your junkie nephew that got thrown out of his parent’s place for stealing. He’s come to you, because he thinks you’ll take pity on him, and not force him into rehab.

To put it another way, how’d you like to buy a new car? Not in the market for one today? Okay, how’d you like to pay for a new car – but not get to drive it? THAT sounds better, doesn’t it? Essentially, a taxpayer-funded bailout is just that. We’d pay Detroit to build cars, but we wouldn’t get to drive them. Even if you do go out and buy one, it would be like paying for it TWICE. Now THAT’S marketing!

And there’s the problem. The only thing that throwing money at the problem will do is to delay the inevitable. But the automobile execs are so unwilling to make the hard choices, they simply will not acknowledge reality. Call this bunch of Detroit Pharaohs the “Kings of Denial,” for they have had ample chances to do the right thing, yet they persist in the fantasy that more money will do the trick.

I’m a big believer in marketing. I believe that marketing has the power to change hearts and minds. But marketing cannot change reality. And the reality here is that, no matter how much – or how little – money we throw at this problem, it won’t matter. In the greater scheme of things, money is not the problem. Bad management, bloated contracts, oversupply and under-demand are. It’s time to step aside and let market forces and our bankruptcy laws deliver a little tough love, and force the healing process to begin.

Ford has a better idea.

Quality is Job One.

Have you driven a Ford lately?

Drive One.

Um…yeah. Each slogan was a reaction to market conditions. “Ford has a better idea” was a reaction to the perception that Ford had become creatively bankrupt. “Quality is Job One” attempted (unsuccessfully) to make the claim that Ford was obsessed with quality. (I owned one. They weren’t.) “Have you driven a Ford lately?” was a lovely little rhetorical question with an implied closed caption – “Look…we’re sorry about all that crap we tried to sell you back in the 70′s. Give us another chance. Really.” Today, Ford’s slogan is “Drive One,” as much a command as it is a plaintive wail in the wilderness of low sales, crap design, bad management, and labor contracts destined to kill what Ford themselves doesn’t mismanage into obscurity.

As if they don’t have enough to worry about, now comes Flash of Genius, the (somewhat dramatized/mostly accurate) story of private inventor Robert Kearns, the inventor of the delay wiper. Ford, along with the rest of the “Big Three,” and most of the rest of the automotive world decided to ignore Kearns patents and simply dare him to sue them over his invention. Kearns eventually beat Ford (and Chrysler) in court, but the fight cost him his marriage, his health, and his sanity.

This movie could be yet another serious black eye for a company that has few parts of it’s body corporate left unharmed. Their response? Apparently, it’s to bury their heads in the sand. Their P.R. princes have decreed that there is no reason to respond (to a movie that equates Ford with Evil Incarnate in Corporate form), as “this case was already settled in court.”

Um…not so much.

It’s now being tried in the Court of Public Opinion. Of the two, the one that can be fatal is the Court of Public Opinion. You can appeal your way out of our legal system. Public Opinion is a much harsher mistress. No appeal. No reversals. No hope. If this movie captures the imagination of the public (no sure bet, to be certain), you’ll see Ford’s sales spin into a death spiral faster than you can say “Edsel.”

I’ve not yet seen the movie, but I followed the case in the press. Ford could have settled over and over and over again. All Kearns insisted on was an admission that it was his idea. Not unreasonable, if you ask me…after all, it WAS his idea. Ford wouldn’t budge. That’s corporate myopia at it’s worst.

If Ford was smart (which today is a lot like saying, “if Congress did it’s job”), they’d meet this movie head on, and divorce themselves from the clowns that were running Ford back in the day. Sadly, the guys at the wheel today seem to be even more clueless than those back in the 60s and 70s. WIth schmarts like this, “Have you driven a Ford lately,” is likely soon to be a question asked only of those who treasure antique autos, for Ford will join such big thinkers like Oldsmobile, Plymouth, American Motors, Studebaker, and Packard on the scrap heap of automotive history.