Detail II

["Mahoney, John" <JMahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Detroit News, February 1, 2006:

GM calls back exec to boost its image: Move is seen as effort by CEO Wagoner to restore confidence in company after $8.6 billion 2005 loss.

General Motors Corp., reeling from huge losses and dogged by bankruptcy rumors, said Tuesday it is bringing back former top public relations executive Steve Harris in an effort to repair its tarnished image.
Harris, head of GM public relations from 1999 to 2003, will replace Tom Kowaleski, who resigned as vice president of global communications less than a week after the No. 1 U.S. automaker posted the second-worst annual loss in its history.
The decision to bring back Harris, 60, is seen as a move by GM's CEO Rick Wagoner to restore public confidence in the company after its $8.6 billion loss last year.
"They are going to have to communicate clearly that there is a strategic plan to rebuild this company," said Jack Trout, president of the marketing firm Trout & Partners in Greenwich, Conn.
With its U.S. market share down to 26 percent, GM is embarking on a sweeping restructuring plan that includes shedding 30,000 jobs and closing or downsizing six assembly plants over the next three years.
Moreover, the automaker faces critical product launches this year including the introduction of a fleet of new full-size SUVs.
Harris said Tuesday that Wagoner asked him last week to come out of retirement and help turn around the negative image of GM with consumers, investors and media organizations.
"There are a lot of incredibly difficult issues facing the industry and GM, but there are a lot of hopeful things too," Harris said. "I hope to help GM tell that side of the story effectively and convincingly."
Kowaleski, 54, was a protege of Harris's who specialized in the product side of automotive communications.
However, GM's corporate performance has been so poor that Wall Street analysts have repeatedly raised the possibility of a bankruptcy filing, and questioned the leadership of Wagoner and his executive team.
In December, the consulting firm Directions Research Inc. released a survey on auto purchasing that found that 74 percent of the Americans polled would not buy a car from a manufacturer that had declared bankruptcy.
GM dealers have been increasingly vocal in lobbying company executives to dispel speculation about bankruptcy and step up efforts to promote the automaker's newest vehicles.
Harris -- who previously headed communications at Chrysler Corp. before it was bought by German automaker Daimler-Benz AG -- said shoring up GM's credibility is a top priority.
"There's no question this is one of the toughest times in the history of GM," he said. "It's my hope that there is still a lot of good will out there and that people want to see a competitive GM again."
Trout said GM needs transparency in its financial data and restructuring plans, as well as a renewed focus on improving its automotive brands.
"The GM 'brand' really only matters to Wall Street and investors," Trout said. "What they really have to do is improve the image of their automotive brands and build on that."
In GM's release, Wagoner praised the return of Harris, who had been running a communications consulting firm based in Birmingham.
"Steve has long enjoyed an outstanding reputation in this industry and is one of the top leaders in his profession," Wagoner said. "I know he will hit the ground running."
Harris officially takes over GM communications today, although Kowaleski will assist in the transition until his departure March 1


Ward's Auto World, September 1988:

Chrysler's top public relation man keeps a low profile

There aren't any plans to retire his number just yet, but Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca has made it pungently clear he no longer intends to play every down as the sole member of the Chrysler Image All Stars.
It's been a one-man show for nearly a decade with Mr. Iacocca calling his own plays, throwing long passes, and making finger-tip catches in the end zone.
These days, the voluble Chrysler chairman would just as soon become a spot player, using his proven skills to take the "Chrysler Crew" in for the big score and leaving the "three yards and a cloud of dust" offense to the journeyman players.
That would suggest a new public relations game plan. So would a flurry of top to bottom changes in assignments and personnel in key Chrysler public relations posts. But the man holding the play book isn't talking to the outside world.
Thomas G. Denomme (pronounced "denim me"), 49, is an auto executive who likes to keep a very low profile. He has managed to do exactly that during his rapid rise since leaving Ford Motor Co. to join Mr. Iacocca in 1980. Mr. Denomme currently is group vice president for corporate planning and external affairs for the parent corporation.
He reports only to the chairman and oversees all strategic planning, public relations, government lobbying, and economic forecasting. As part of the deal, he remains nearly invisible compared to such other Ford alumni as Bennett E. Bidwell and Robert A. Lutz.
And despite his role -- at least technically -- as the company's top spokesman other than Mr. Iacocca , he doesn't talk to the press. Handling external affairs, it would seem, is best done at Chrysler without the presence of notebooks, cameras and tape recorders.
"Mr. Denomme doesn't give interviews," blandly announces a lower level public relations person.
If that might strike a few people as a tad bizarre, it's not without precedent. John Ford, former Chrysler public relations vice president, worked so hard at ducking the press that cynical reporters began circulating tongue-in-cheek rumors he didn't exist. When a man claiming to be Mr. Ford showed up at a Chrysler Christmas party, it was argued he was a hired actor.
Presumably not even Mr. Denomme contends that highly honed public relations skills are a key feature of his resume. Most of his automotive career has been spent as a respected stategic planner, including a stretch as manager of Ford Mustang car planning during the launch of that hugely successful Iacocca-driven project.
At Chrysler, says an executive who worked closely with him, it was Mr. Denomme who first seriouly [sic] proposed a Chrysler buyout of American Motors Corp.
But even as the details of the AMC takeover were being worked out, Mr. Iacocca privately was making no secrtet [sic] of his unhappiness with overall Chrysler public relations. Mr. Denomme, meanwhile, was playing a quietly expanding role in calling the public relation shots.
Directed to look for a new top gun for Chrysler public relations was Glenn E. White, corporate vice president for personnel and organization. At least one offer was made and turned down, according to one reliable report, partially because of unease with the changing organizational structure at Chrysler.
Adding fuel to the fire under the public relations staff were a pair of major public blunders by the corporation. First came a barrage of bad publicity surrounding the Chrysler admission that odometers of new cars were routinely disconnected while executives drove them so that they could eventually be sold as new.
Then came weeks of negative press surrounding the clumsy handling of the closing of the former AMC Kenesha [sic], WI, complex.
"The Wall Street Journal called them public relations blunders, but they really waren't [sic]," says a top public relations executive at another auto company. "The problems were operational."
Further complicating matters was the less-than-clearly defined role of Chrysler Motors Chairman Gerald Greenwald, a key player in the Kenosha controversy and a major executive-of-record in both the AMC purchase and Kenosha closing. Mr. Greenwald when pointed questions about Chrysler promises in Wisconsin arose. But the public relation staff is said to have been uncertain as to who was calling the shots.
Shoved out or sideways during the internal battle have been James L. Tolley, corporate vice president for public affairs (early retirement); Baron K. Bates, vice president for Chrysler Motors Corp. public relations (moved to Chrysler's New York office), and Bernard F. (Moon) Mullins, director of sales and marketing public relations (early retirement).
Several public relations people have received new assignments in the process.
Under Mr. Denomme, the current leaders of Chrysler public relations include:
] John E. Guiniven, director of corporate public relations. His responsibilities include corporate operational matters.
] Steven J. Harris, director for brand and product communications. Mr. Harris, an AMC alumnus, oversees product and marketing public relations.
] Michael K. Morrison, director of internal communications. In addition to being Mr. Iacocca's chief speech writer, Mr. Morrison handles publication and information directed at Chrysler employes [sic].
People familiar with the Crysler [sic] public relations situation split into two camps when asked to predict what happens next.
One version is nothing much. This theory foresees, under the popular "push-down" management approach, nobody being named in the short term to preside over all of Chrysler public relations beyond Mr. Denomme. The argument is that eventually one of the other three men will become more equal than the remaining two.
The second theory sees Mr. Iacocca still quitly [sic] searching for a strong public relations guru he is personally comfortable with and, more importantly, trusts and respects. Mr. Iacocca obviouly [sic] knows more about public relations than the average CEO and is not a man without strong opinions in the area.
People who know Mr. Denomme describe him as a very quiet, self-effacing man possessed of a brilliant intellect and the ability to analyze problems dispassionately.
A marketing graduate of the Uiversity [sic] of Detroit, he joined Ford Motor Co. in 1961 as a financial analyst in the controller's office, but spent most of his nearly 20 years with the company in posts that focused on planning. At the time he left Ford, he was director of the marketing policy and strategy office.
"I know it sounds like a cliche," says one business acquaintance, "but he really is a strategic thinker. He proposed the AMC deal well before anyone else."
Nobody suggests Mr. Denomme is a hermit. He serves on U of D's board of trustees amd the board of the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce.
What Mr. Denomme clearly seems to be is a very talented corporate staff adviser more than comfortable with helping to produce, rather than star in, the Chrysler show.
Unlike Mr. Bidwell and Mr. Lutz, who are known to question judiciously the notion of Iacocca infallability [sic], Mr. Denomme is said to be the kind of executive who provides options rather than opinions.
"You won't find his fingerprints on anything controversial ," says a former Ford associate. "That's unless it had the very highest level approvals."
"He 's a fine person," says a veteran of the days of the Mustang launch. "A man's man. The kind of guy you'd take hunting. He acts with his mind, not his mouth."
He was not, however, part of the central "Fairlane Committee' of conspirators who named themselves after a Dearborn motel and forced the Mustang into the dominant place in the Ford product lineup.
At Chrysler, Mr. Denomme is said to perceive his job as setting long-range corporate public relations policy and keeping what's publicly said about the corporation (Mr. Iacocca expected) in a more traditional U.S. corporate mode.
That approach may make a lot of sense on paper, but it may miss, at least at the marketing level, what instinctive public relations can do for a company that was, for a long time, something less than a sure-thing bet for survival.
Chrysler new product previews, which presumably now will become tidy little events with clockwork schedules, remain the stuff of legend.
For many year, Chrysler had a thin new model lineup, but the best parties on the press preview circuit. The rental of a retired battleship for a cocktail party or a safari into the desert for cold beer and bourbon were routine matters.
Long after it became popular for some people to try to sell public relations as a science, Chrysler held tight to a non-intimadating [sic] kind of carnival press agentry that allowed people with serious questions to get answers and everyone else to have as much fun as they could handle. Anyone with the most obscure claims to press credentials could get invited to a Chrylser [sic] press preview, providing they hadn't truly disgraced themselves in past years.
That environment, say people who know Mr. Denomme, is too filled with varialbles [sic] and silliness to work well in a corporate plan.
He tackles jobs with great seriousness," says an admirer.
And the serious problem that remains for Chrylser [sic] is regaining a corporate identity that can comfortably survive the eventual departure of Mr. Iacocca.
Of all of the people who report directly to the highly visible chairman, Mr. Denomme is said least likely to propose-even as part of a computer-generated strategic plan -- the notion that the younger members of the team under Mr. Iacocca become significantly more accessible and quotable.
"Public relations is a management policy function," says one insider who knows Chrysler.
Adds another: "Iacocca's never liked rule books, at least for himself."
So if there is a new public relations policy at Chrysler, it would seem Mr. Iacocca will explain it and Mr. Denomme will carry it out.
Privately.


The New York Times, October 3, 1984:

A. M. C. to Import Renault Mini-Van
 
The American Motors Corporation said it would import a mini-van for the 1986 model year from Regie Nationale des Usines Renault of France. A.M.C. said it would bring in 15,000 models a year of the front-wheel-drive Renault Espace. 
Prices were not announced. Renault owns 46 percent of A.M.C. 
Separately, the Metalworking News edition of American Metal Market said A.M.C. would redesign its Renault Alliance small cars made in Kenosha, Wis., in 1987. Stephen Harris, an A.M.C. spokesman, said he ''hasn't heard anything about that'' and could not comment. 


So, Espace minivan went on sale the same year as Alpine AMX/4?  Cool!

(And another AMX concept you demand to see details on someday, also?)

Ah, the way it wasn't.

Back when auto history

http://tinyurl.com/93yxe

still started with AMC.

http://tinyurl.com/7jb3j

The last picture show:

"Not in THESE parts!!"

http://tinyurl.com/8beh9