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The Nova By Kurt Kitasaki
I never assumed that marketing a car with an exploding fuel tank would cause so many problems! As a CEO I felt it would benefit the American consumer, given the adventurous nature of our culture. When we first introduced the Nova, it instantly became the hottest sports car in its class. Our market share grew so rapidly that the major automakers trembled. In fact, they even considered filing an anti-trust suit with the Justice Department. Our success centered on the brilliant advertising campaign by my lawyer and vice-president of consumer research/propaganda, William Goebbels: no relation to the Nazi, (at least I hope not.) Together we created a series of commercials, that appealed to the thrill-seeking nature of our 16-40 target audience. We showed the Nova driving through rain-forests, baseball stadiums, and county-fairs, with loud irrational music in the background. The sight of the sleek panther structured framework, combined with the glaring, colored lacquered paint, mesmerized the consumer and in one year, we had half of the market. Then someone discovered a very slight problem. According to our chief engineer, due to a design flaw, up to 15% of the fuel tanks had the potential to spontaneously explode. The good news was that I finally knew what I would buy my mother-in-law for her birthday! I called an emergency meeting to determine the course of action. Along with Goebbels and all top executives, I called in an array of accountants, accompanied by their assistants who punched away on their hand-held calculators. We performed one of the most highly-regarded practices in the business community: the cost/benefit analysis. With our razor-keen intellects, we estimated that the cost of all expenses incurred in not recalling the Nova. This included lawsuits, replacement vehicles, refunds, etc. We juxtaposed them with the cost of recalling the vehicles. After 23 million key-strokes, we reached a decisive conclusion. The price of recalling would be approximately $14.52 per vehicle; the cost of leaving the vehicle on the road came to $14.51. It gave a clear outcome: we would not recall the Nova! A few un-patriotic executives tried objecting, but my decision was final and, before they left, I said: "You can't argue with numbers!" Later one of our research engineers was still furious about my decision, he called me up and said, "Mr. Grayson, our research shows that the temperature in one of those burning vehicles could reach up to a million degrees!" I simply responded. "Yeah, but fortunately it's a dry heat. Now go back to work, or you're fired!" My trusted adviser, Goebbels, walked over to me and stated that my firm decisiveness reminded him of a boss that one of his late relatives worked for, in Germany, during the 1940's. Despite the flattering comparison, I've always been a man way too modest to accept praise. I smiled at him, stating, "It's all about serving the customer". Now we would've had a fairy tale ending, except for one problem. Over the last twenty years, there emerged an organization that replaced the unions, as the most painful thorn in the side of corporate management: the consumer advocates. In the most irresponsible manner, they began to publicize every explosion from the Nova. The media frenzy created such bad publicity that we noticed a slump in sales. The most antagonistic of these advocates was the lawyer Joe Rambler, a man whose reputation for ruining the image of companies surpassed Ralph Nader. Rambler had a special vendetta against my corporation ever since one of our defective air-bags prematurely ejected, giving his roving pit-bull a black eye. He quickly jumped on this opportunity. For the first time, I began to doubt our strategy. In the cost/benefit analysis, we never calculated the price of bad publicity! My professors, at Harvard Business School, never taught us how to calculate the monetary damage of showing an exploding vehicle, on the five o'clock news. They often referred us to an ethics class when the question came up. I felt my confidence wavering. There seemed to be no alternative, but to recall the Novas. Then my trusted adviser Goebbels gave some invaluable insight, which attested to his unparalleled knowledge of the consumer mind. Instead of wasting billions on a recall, and quality improvements, we could instead invest more into advertising, to offset this unwarranted publicity. Goebbels had a Phd in psychology; he explained that his study, of our American culture, showed that the average individual had an inclination towards reckless experiences. Sitting back in my suede leather chair, he argued that the target consumer had a sub-conscious desire to take risks. "Observe the violence you see on television, Mr. Grayson," he stated. Taking a remote control, he clicked some slides onto the projection screen. I saw people sky diving, drive by shootings, white-water rafting, and posters of action adventure movies, juxtaposed with a human brain in the background. "The average customer in our target segment doesn't really care about quality. They want image and glamour", he remarked, taking off his 14k gold-rimmed glasses. "Wait a minute. Are you saying that the consumer will subordinate safety, in order to improve their image?" I questioned. "Precisely. We can't compete with the Japanese and Germans in quality, but instead we should give the people what they really desire; adventure!" It hit me like a divine revelation: I finally understood the mind of this marketing genius. We could maintain our sales volume, despite the efforts of these consumer advocates. It's in the nature of our society to seek out image in a car, before safety. In fact, subconsciously, the risk of owning an American car, that may explode, is enticing to our customers, because of the subliminal patriotic implications. Why would an American buy a Nova opposed to a better-built German or Japanese car? Because they know, in the back of their minds, it symbolizes why we're such a great country. It reminds us why we beat them during World War II, which is, that we're superior to them, at building things that can explode! Once again, it brought us back to the cost/benefit analysis I learned at Harvard. The consumer would be willing to put up with a certain amount of "cost" (the danger of an explosion.), if the "benefit" (the idea of driving a car, which would make them feel good about themselves) was greater than that "cost". We quickly picked up our cell-phones, calling all executives to stop plans for a recall. Instead we held a meeting to design an advertising campaign requiring three times the annual budget and would describe the Nova as, "the car for the adventure-seeker". This amount of saturation into the public mind would offset the negative publicity of Mr. Rambler, and the consumer advocates. Despite reports of explosions, and expenses from product lawsuits, our sales rebounded, increasing our profit margins. In fact, things were so positive that we drafted a design for a new vehicle that had a fuel tank four times the normal size, planted on the front fender; called the Supernova. Our nemesis continued to counter-attack, with ads of his own, but we simply had more funds. We would have easily won this conflict, except for an incredible phenomenon. Due to the unique frame-work of the Nova, the bursting flames would often interact with the graphical wire design, creating unusual patterns of fire. Some observers testified that the fire from the explosions resembled the pattern of an Indian chief; another reported the image of Frank Sinatra, and one, a student from Berkeley, thought he saw a pizza, with extra anchovies. All these visions combined were harmless, compared to a pattern that often occurred during a collision. During such an event, the flames would resemble a fist with the middle-index finger pointing out. This event turned into disaster, when Rambler made a commercial from film footage of one such explosion. I sat aghast, in my 42-room mansion, as I watched his political ad on my wide-screen television. There, on the screen, I saw a recorded explosion of the flames coalescing into a middle-finger. In the background the voice of Mr. Rambler said: "This is what CEO Grayson thinks of consumer safety!" I ran out of my mansion in a patriotic fervor, jumped into my German-made 98 Mercedes, and raced downtown to our corporate building. I entered the public relations department and saw all 85 employees running about in a state of panic. The blow by Rambler was an unseen masterstroke. In a daring manoeuver, he completely erased the entire emotion-based social conditioning of our advertising! The reason? He countered with the one image, that more than any other, spoke to the heart and mind of American culture: the middle finger. In a few months our market share dropped by 60%. We tried all kinds of promotional enticements like offering a case of #10 sunblock with every car, or a hat with a very large brim. We even visited one of the burning vehicles with a local cub-scout troop, to sponsor a marshmallow roast. It came to no avail. According to Goebbels, the only way we could ever turn the tide of lagging sales was to discredit the source of the malicious attack. Mr. Rambler was in the middle of a large liability suit against the Nova and, for the past several months, he had been boldly guaranteeing a victory, in the news media. If we could defeat him in this high-profile case, we could strike at his credibility, and win back our market-share. There remained one problem. The trial, already in its later stages, according to our chief lawyer Goebbels, had gone terribly wrong. Every scientific expert testified to the explosive nature of the fuel tanks. |