Where is Lee Iacocca when we really need him?
The guy credited with the rollout of the iconic Ford Mustang once rescued a bankrupt, downtrodden automaker, Chrysler, and staved off certain marketplace death with an amazing comeback story that had some suggesting that he run for high public office.
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| Pat Perez wins the Bob Hope Classic on Sunday -- but doesn't receive a new car. (Getty Images) |
Maybe Iacocca needs to stop writing books and start righting ships, particularly those vessels sailing off the U.S. assembly lines that nobody seems interested in buying. He always seemed like a standup guy, unlike, say, certain silk suits who replaced him.
To wit (first time the words Chrysler and wit have been used in the same sentence in years), company execs last week elected to quietly remove the automaker's name from the PGA Tour event in Palm Springs, Calif. Chrysler wanted to avoid the limelight and lay low, having already taken nearly $25 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds over the past few weeks to remain solvent.
Hoping to dodge catcalls from critics for forging ahead with a perceived flight of fancy, a golf tournament, Chrysler nonetheless paid millions to sponsor an event that, for the previous 22 years, had been called the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.
Yet the automaker didn't use that pricy opportunity to hawk a solitary sedan or SUV. Astoundingly enough to some of us, company officials were lauded, not pounded.
A front-page story in the Los Angeles Times sports section this week praised Chrysler for taking the moral high road and not rubbing our noses in the fact that a company already on the public dole was spending roughly $5 million to sponsor a second-tier sports event.
"Chrysler did the right thing," the Times story opined.
True enough, if by right, the newspaper meant, "flushed more of our money down the tubes without trying to fix the original leak."
A few weeks back, as the Big Three lined up on Capitol Hill seeking billions of our dwindling tax bucks to make it through the end of the year, I torpedoed the notion of automakers being allowed to spend public funds on sports sponsorships and endorsement money handed to athletes. I was particularly tough on Buick, which sponsors two PGA Tour stops and had Tiger Woods on the payroll at the time.
Compared to Chrysler, the Buick folks are the shrewdest of opportunists. Backed into a corner by near-ironclad, multiyear contracts with the tour, Buick has elected to continue staging its events, recognizing whatever value that the tour's marketing platform presents. It might seem like a bad stance for a company swimming in red ink, but the money was signed away to the tour, so why not get some marketing bang for their buck? Or, rather, our buck?
"Make lemonade out of lemons," said David Carter, director of the USC Sports Business Institute.
Chrysler, instead, elected to pay the money and didn't pimp a single ride. The company's name was nowhere to be found and rarely mentioned in TV or radio coverage. There was no flashy Crossfire convertible parked on an island at the 18th. Granted, their CEOs weren't on hand, frivolously spending millions on caviar in posh hospitality tents, which was good for a few brownie points, but what about the sales opportunity that was flat wasted?
Chrysler took $5 million of publicly tinged funds and threw it at players without trying to drum up business, a ridiculous waste. Say that a fan buys a pricy Super Bowl ticket and later loses his job -- does he stay home and eat the ticket, because attending might create the impression that he's spending recklessly? The thing is, like the theoretical ticket money for Tampa, the PGA Tour sponsorship money was long gone and locked in. So make the most of it.
Surely, the Buick and Chrysler tacks both are tough to spin in the court of public opinion, Carter said, because the road ahead for tour title sponsors in economic turmoil is daunting and divergent. Either way, somebody gets forked. But at least Buick is trying to market cars and remedy the crux of the issue.
"To a certain extent it could be viewed as throwing good money after bad," Carter said. "You've got to find a way to delicately act upon sunk costs."
The president and chairman of the Hope Classic told the Times that there was no conscious decision among the Chrysler brass to stay home en masse, which makes sense. U.S. automakers have apparently been making decisions while unconscious for years.
"It was not organized," John Foster told the newspaper. "It was obvious, as we talked on the phone about setting things up here, that they had no time. That they were all busy."
They were probably depositing last week's $1.5 billion check from U.S. taxpayers, bringing the Chrysler bailout total to $24.9 billion, according to published reports. I know what you're thinking: Staying home, to an extent, smacks of cowardice.
It blows my mind as they blow my money. In short, it just plain blows. And to think that the Times headline said, "sponsor employs caution wisely."
Virtually bankrupt and laying off thousands of workers, caution might be all that Chrysler employs by the end of the year.
