I recently read that GM have announced a partnership with Ebay to sell their vehicles complete with the ability to haggle, bid and grab a bargain. They have also recently launched GM Labs, a place where you can "get to know the designers, check out some of their projects, and help them get to know you. Like a consumer feedback event without the one-way glass."Both these initiatives are clearly a response to the dire straights GM (and the wider American car manufacturing sector) are currently in. However, it also reflects a general trend to 'cosy up' to customers by sharing or co-creating design and/or marketing ideas and also to find alternative avenues for brand conversations or retail experiences. The latter of these trends also includes brand use of social media tools such as Twitter, on which much has been written including the recently maligned exploits by @habitatUK.Debates around the direct benefits of 'co-creation' or branded social media will continue and rightly so. However what these discussions do not highlight is that even if a particular exercise is successful in its own right, it still needs to integrate into a much bigger picture. More channels and opportunities for communication, product development and marketing or retail experiences means an ever more complicated landscape to carve the right path through. Experts in design, marketing and retail all talk very different languages and often compete for board attention and funding. Bringing a designer closer to the user through collaboration should empower both parties and illicit ideas that shoving a marketing report under their nose will not. This, although tricky to do, is not the real trick though. The real trick is to forge an approach that involves a variety stakeholders at various stages of a project to ensure that the right idea doesn't get lost in translation on its way up corporate ladder. Again, the challenge of Master Planning.
There are rather a number of points here that need to be pulled apart.
GM using eBAy and other creative ways of getting to retail customers is not a new concept, just an unusual step for them in the current crisis. But customers have disliked the retail dealership experience for decades (viz the early successes of the Saturn brand, with no haggling policy). It is common to put out on various net services exactly which model of a brand you are looking for, type, color, so on, so forth, as well as how much you are willing to pay for it. Dealers will respond with greater or lesser relevance, but always invite you to come in. I know somoene well who said, if you are agreeing, then you're the dealer, but you bring the car to me, along with all the papers, I'll sign, you'll drop off the keys. The retail experience is a sore point for GM as well as all sorts of other brands, e.g. Toyota.
Secondly, GM and Chrysler are in trouble, but I don't believe Ford is, owing to better and tighter strategic (and financial) planning, and a steady stream of innovative content. So that's another topic here, innovation.
The generalization to be made from all this is that if you have a focused business and business plan, and build products that anyone wants to buy in the first place, then you will manage. The tide is out and all ships are down, but, owing to focus and innovation, Ford less so.
It has long been possible to "design" your own car online or at a kiosk inside the dealership, and have the car delivered with the options and contents you specify. This is simply using current manufacturing process and electronic capabilities to perform mass customization equations, leading to a sense of satisfaction.
As to co-creation, car companies have long held consumer "clinics" in which they explore ideas, concepts, innovations, designs, whole cars, and so on. This longstanding tendency has lately accelerated as car companies have learned that without customer approval and even enthusiasm within their targeted segments, they can spend the money on bringing out another in an endless succession of cars with mediocre to unsatisfactory response. They may also find out that a proposed vehicle has considerable unanticipated appeal outside its presumed segments, or might do, given minor modifications.
Bringing designers and marketing in closer (and more realistic) contact with targeted consumers or customers has been going on for ages in the car businss, but the thing that is true is that designers and marketing people are increasingly having to become a whole lot more fluent in talking consumer talk, as a common language for product design and brand planning.
The collaborative process is deeply ingrained in the car design, engineering, marketing, and to an unfortunately lesser extent, retailing, and has long been a characteristic. What has really begun to happen is that all these people who speak all these languages have stopped trying to talk with each other, and have caught on that facing outward, in the consumers' direction, is the real key to making a product that anyone wants to buy. You really shouldn't be selling something that nobody wants to buy, whatever your business.
Jeremy Brown
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