A FORD MAN NO MORE, BUT THAT'S NO CAUSE FOR CHEVY TO CELEBRATE

I grew up a die hard Ford man. My father sold Fords, and playing around in the showroom and on the car lot, plus the unparalleled cool of the Mustang, was enough to hook me for life. And, of course, as a Ford man, I hated Chevrolets. The enemy, period!

A funny thing has occurred, though. When I look into my yard we have two vehicles parked there. A Dodge Grand Caravan and, gasp, a Chevy truck. How's that happen? Easy. Ford lost me. And, if you're a Chevy man or a Dodge fan, don't get excited. Neither GM or Chrysler did one thing to gain me, and if I'd have been a die hard loyalist to one of them, they'd have lost me, too.

And it wasn't all the crappy cars all the American automakers put on the road in the 70's and 80's. I was entrenched in the buy American thing enough to overlook that (illogical as that was. If we were going to be loyal enough to them to buy their cars, shouldn't they be loyal enough to us to make decent cars?). No, it was the systematic destruction each of these automakers (and their rivals in Japan and Europe) did to their brands. After all, it's brands that we're loyal to. And that loyalty doesn't require logic. But it does require brand management, something automakers, along with many other businesses, have gotten away from.


First the car companies destroyed their own "stepping stone" brand model. See, this is how they drew it up years ago. I was supposed to buy a Ford or two, then step up to a Mercury, and aspire to one day be a Lincoln man. Made sense. The GM chain was supposed to go Chevy to Pontiac to Buick to Oldsmobile to Cadillac. But instead of keeping their lines specific, assigning the appropriate cars to the appropriate brands they started competing with each other. Chevy wanted to keep their customers, and build cars to compete with the other GM brands. Pontiac and Chevy competed with muscle cars. Chevy build sedans, just like Buick and Olds. Ford and Mercury went head to head, and, in the 70's, the sporty Ford Thunderbird inexplicably morphed into a Lincoln wanna-be for a few years.

Next, the accountants took this last bad move a step further, and as a money saving move, demanded that the various "brands" (by now, a dubious use of the term) within the company essentially release the same cars with different names. Now every Ford had an easily recognizable Mercury counterpart, every Chevrolet a matching Pontiac.

Then, they abandoned the traditional brand dealership model. Instead of a Ford or Ford/Mercury/Lincoln dealer, I started seeing Fords available at the same dealership that sold Dodges and Pontiacs and, gasp, Chevrolets. So the guy who was selling me a car didn't have any particular loyalty to Ford. He'd be just as happy to have me in one of those tacky, over-styled Camaros. He might even be peddling Toyotas and Hondas. These things are starting to look a lot like commodities, huh?

Meanwhile, as the Japanese and European Automakers build assembly plants in America, the American automakers started building plants oversees. Now, all of these companies are publicly traded, sold internationally as stocks and bonds. I can own part of Toyota. People in Japan and Germany can own stock in Ford. And, to further confuse matters, the various companies started buying each other. So tell me, Mr. Buy American, just what is an American automobile?

Everything about the romance of the Ford brand got sucked out of it. Everything that lead to me a making an emotional commitment to Ford - it's gone! I decide what type of vehicle I need and I go find the best deal. I'm shopping based on price, period. Just like I buy oranges, flour, gasoline, sugar, etc. Commodities. Would I ever buy a Ford again? Certainly. I'm just as likely to buy a Ford as any other car on the market. I'm just not any more likely to buy one.

While the Ford Motor Company took the brunt of this blog, and automakers in general seem to be the subject, the lesson is for all business. We live in a day and age where strong, established brand loyalties are threatened on every front - by idiots with marketing majors who push brand extension (a greed-driven brand death sentence every time), by accountants slashing costs at all costs (and usually slashing the very things that make their brands special) and by management that just can't wrap their brain around the esoteric, emotional characteristics that don't show up in a PowerPoint presentation or a spread sheet, but make all the difference in a loyal customer's mind.

Brand loyalty is not, has not ever been, logical. But it is vital! It's the most valuable thing a product can own. And it's usually destroyed from within. Indeed, I'm a Ford man no more, but that's no cause for Chevy to celebrate.