Chrysler Ready To 'Listen' On New Site

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Like they hadn't been listening? As reported in Advertising Age Magazine (http://www.adage.com/) The Automaker is to Recruit an Online Consumer Advisory Panel.

It's not that the online sessions won't be that informative, or that Chrysler won't be doing anything with the information. It's just that all the other auto manufacturers collect exactly the same bits of infomation - promoting a parity situation in which Chrysler will be unable to budge it's distant 3rd position in the market. Typically, this type of consumer input substantively fails to move the sales or market share needle - let alone consumer interest and involvement.

So why does Bob Nardelli keep signing the checks for VP - CMO Deborah Wahl Meyer who is very busy learning all of this for the first time? Does she not know that:

To get ahead, you have to learn things no one else knows. To CREATE THAT KNOWLEDGE you must follow the following recipe to stimulate consumer minds to say things they'd never otherwise think to say.

To invigorate a brand and find out what people want we first sit down and list out over 500 dimensions concerning that product that in every way shape or form impact and influence consumer perception and purchase behavior regarding that brand or product. (Otherwise they just talk about cup holders and places to put their Garmin or Tom Tom.) Once done, the real work begins. Under each dimension; sensory, form, function, usage, image, attitude, price, packaging, delivery system, state changes, reward, escape, heritage, trust, tradition, quality, awards, rewards and many other dimensions only we know of, we bullet point another 500 short phrases per dimension that in every way shape and form impact and influence consumer perception and purchase behavior. When done we will have amassed about 250,000 phrases - many times the number of ideas an advertising agency or company brings to the table in the lifetime of a brand. From this list we hand-select 500 to 1,000 phrases that we put in front of consumers so that consumers can select the phrases they like best and that would compel them to try a product once, and if they tried it and liked it to buy it again. We employ this Consumer-Creativity® as the foundation for the highly-differentiating and salable concepts that result for companies from General Mills to General Motors, Procter & Gamble to Pizza Hut.

Home Depot CMO Roger Adams Must Find New Crib

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Leaves Retailer After a Year at Top Marketing Post

But the real issue is whether the brand became a brand in demand or a brand in decline during his tenure. The experience of less than one lifetime again claims the life of another CMO. He implemented "emotion" as the change agent?! He focused on "the consumer"?! So did Saturn, and the division, thanks to Hal Riney's shot from the hip has yet to run in the black for General Motors. When will these guys turn to outside help so that they no longer need suffer through learning everything for the first time? Why must one look back and say, "if I only knew then what I know now." Note to CMOs: Turn to Calle & Company for all of your future consumer intelligence.

Chrysler Chief Sees Link of Housing to Car Sales

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Excuses are all too easy for Bob. Blaming car quality is all to easy for us. In reality, Chrysler's problem is that they are trying to sell today and tomorrow's cars with yesterday's positioning strategies. Bob's position just lets everyone, including execs at the company and their ad agencies off the hook all too easily. Bob talks about "right-sizing" the business. BS. That just gives him an out and lets him set the high water mark wherever he wants to. The guys in the picture don't seem to be buying it either. In Detroit, or any category, speed is expensive, positioning is the highest octane fuel, how fast do you want to go? In all of these years Chrysler has never done the qualitative homework to look at abstract dimensions to find out what really motivates people about its products. Here's what the New York Times had to say.

DETROIT, Sept. 7 — Only a month after taking charge of Chrysler, Robert L. Nardelli is concerned that problems in the housing market and the broader economy are hurting car and truck sales, and he wants his company to draft a plan to respond. Click on the post title to follow the link to the article.

CMO Strategy: Companies Must Lift the Velvet Curtain

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Management Can't Function Independent of Marketing

Wow! This bashing marketers for not having good positioning strategies is becoming a theme!

Face it. Chrysler, like many other manufacturer's, have yet to figure out what truly motivates consumers about its products. If they had, they wouldn't have yo-yo sales trends, and they wouldn't jettison brands, managements and advertising agencies. In the last 50 years, all I've seen is a proliferation of integrated marketing support devices employed which obfuscate the fact that they still have not figured out how to position products to consumers. So these guys are going to continue to sell tomorrow's cars with yesterday's positioning strategies. When are all these guys going to get tired of being the chum for the churn?

If marketing can ever figure out how to get them, let Chrysler manufacturing figure out how to keep them. THAT'S INTEGRATED THINKING THAT BINDS MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING.