Posted 4/2/2009

PUT MICHELLE OBAMA IN A MALIBU

If General Motors is to be saved, the company going to have to hire somebody who knows how to sell cars.

More specifically, someone who understands the deeply personal relationship between man and his car. More importantly, someone who understands the relationship between woman and her car, since women buy 50 percent of the cars and influence the purchase of an additional 20 percent.

Nobody at GM fills the bill. Nobody in the government does, either.

Take the Chevrolet Malibu as a case in point.

The new Malibu is a mid-sized sedan introduced in 2007 to compete with the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. And on paper the Malibu looks like a real winner.

The Malibu beat the bejabbers out of the Camry and Accord in the famed J.D. Power reliability study, Malibu was named "2008 Highest Ranked Midsize Car in Initial Quality."

Malibu was named "2008 North American Car of the Year" by the North American International Automobile Show.

Malibu was named one of the ten best cars of the year by Car and Driver magazine.

Malibu was strongly recommended by Consumer Reports.

The 2008 Malibu won six additional automobile awards.

With all those honors, Malibu should have been number one in sales in 2008. But it wasn't.

Although greatly improved over 2007 sales, the Malibu sold only 177,089 cars, compared with 436,617 for Camry and 373,789 for Accord.

A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes potential buyers and experts saying, "It takes time for quality to sink in." Others say, "GM has a poor perception of quality."

But quality is not the number one determinant of a car's consumer acceptance.

Status is.

The car you drive says something about your status in life.

As long as Camry and Toyota are higher status cars, it doesn't much matter how many quality awards Malibu wins.

Why don't the auto executives understand this?

It seems that everyone in Detroit depends on consumer research to guide their marketing, sales and design decisions.

Consumers are perfectly willing to tell the auto companies how to design cars. But they will not tell everything that makes them buy. Especially status. No one wants to admit he is a status seeker. But in real life, most people are. If you ask them whether they would rather arrive at a party in a Camry or a Malibu, almost everyone would answer Camry. But this is not the kind of query that finds its way into automobile research.

One auto company formulated 14 reasons people buy luxury cars. Respondents were asked to rank them in order of importance. What attribute was at the bottom of the list? Status. Yet everyone knows that without status, no luxury car would sell.

Before Ford bought Jaguar, the vehicle conveyed enormous status and prestige to its driver, even though quality ratings placed in near junk status. The popular joke: "I bought two Jaguars, one for me and one for the repair shop." The combination of styling, materials and import cachet easily overcame Jaguar's quality problems.

The success of Harley Davidson was built on the "biker's romance of the road." It won incredible prestige when Malcolm Forbes started riding one.

The Toyota Camry was not a hot seller from day one. Later, the company put the Lexus six-cylinder engine in it and the press began to call the Camry "a little Lexus." Camry became successful hitching its image to the highly prestigious Lexus.

The Honda Accord became successful because its exterior and interior dimensions were highly compatible with the bodies of the American female. With quality superior to Taurus, the Accord became described in articles headlined, "Women Love Their Hondas."

Getting to be success on quality alone takes a great deal of time. And time is not something cash-strapped General Motors has much of.

Instead, additional ingredients and catalysts need to be pumped into the Malibu image to give it instant status and prestige.

Although the Ford Mustang was an instant success with women, it was derided as "a secretary's car" by the automotive press. Then the paparazzi caught Hollywood star Steve McQueen driving a rusty Mustang convertible. Suddenly the Mustang won high status with men. (Actually, McQueen boomed the sale of rusty convertibles of every make.)

General Motors could learn a lot from the McQueen phenomenon.

The company isn't interested in attracting rebellious young men to the Malibu because the sedan is a family car.

A family car?

Who is the McQueen of modern day families?

Just look at TV, read the mags or check out the newspapers.

The Obamas are.

Just think what would happen if the voyeur world started seeing Michelle and her two daughters smiling in a Chevrolet Malibu.

Malibu sales volume would boom – because Michelle Obama is uniquely qualified to convey status to a family automobile.

This kind of thinking could save General Motors – and wouldn't cost the taxpayer very much.

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