Two decades later and they still haven't learned the lesson of Michael Moore

Open letter to auto industry executives:

You guys need a reality check. You have been spending way too much time in your gated Grosse Pointe communities and not enough time experiencing life the way most of us live it.

The Washington Post yesterday reported that despite the 24 daily nonstop commercial flights between Detroit and Washington, the CEOs of the three failing US automakers chose to fly on individual private planes to a hearing where they asked taxpayers to pony up $25 billion to paper over their wretched record of mismanaging formerly great American industrial companies.

There are frequently very good business reasons why it makes sense for corporate executives to use private aircraft to go somewhere. More control over the scheduling, getting somewhere quickly in a crisis, and so on. But this was an incredible display of what the Post politely called "tone deafness" to the climate in Washington, and it may very well have killed the industry's chances of getting a dime from lawmakers.

It is a direct parallel to the disastrous tone deafness of an earlier GM CEO, Roger Smith, when his office was approached by a young unknown documentary film maker from Flint, who wanted to discuss with Smith the impending plant closures and layoffs at GM's Flint complex, which was going to wreak havoc on the Flint economy.

Despite pleas from some of GM's very bright PR counselors at the time (I know this from speaking to them directly), Smith refused -- against PR advice -- to meet with the filmmaker, and Michael Moore's movie, "Roger and Me" went on to launch Moore's career in ambush documentaries.

The whole premise of the movie was "Roger Smith doesn't care enough to meet with me, and he's now trying to hide from me." Smith, with his aristocratic arrogance, played right into the typecasting he was being shoehorned into by Moore.

If he had been honest, met with the filmmaker, explained the difficult decisions, maybe, just maybe, it would have damaged the premise of the movie. Instead, he just helped confirm Moore's worst caricature of the GM CEO, and severely damaged the firm's reputation.

KEY TAKEAWAY FOR CORPORATE EXECUTIVES: Be honest, if you don't know, say you don't know. Stop pretending you have this economic thing figured out any better than your hourly workers. We're all in this together whether you like it or not -- and your behavior up to now is clearly indicating that you don't like it and really do think you are different from the rest of us.

And so today, we have this awful PR disaster that may very well wreck the chances for restructuring this industry any time soon.

You have to think that the veteran PR people at these auto companies MUST have told the CEOs that flying their $10,000/hour jets into DC would be an image problem. It certainly didn't get past the members of Congress who grilled them, according to Dana Milbank's column in the Post. As Milbank reports:

"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands," Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) advised the pampered executives at a hearing yesterday. "It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. . . . I mean, couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?"

If the miserable consequences of this error in judgment weren't so appalling for thousands of innocent auto workers, Michael Moore might even be chuckling, with a slight hint of schadenfreude. But I have a feeling he's punching holes in the wall with his fist.

And probably so are the PR folks at these companies, because saying "I told you so!" isn't a real career option for them right now.

Get back to your First Life, people!

Eric Kintz, Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP, has made a very cogent argument that supports all of the gut instincts I've had about Second Life, the Linden Labs "metaverse" where people get to create avatars for themselves that might or might not be human. A lot of people are REALLY passionate about Second Life, including some folks in the PR community.

Lots of computer companies have invested tons of capital to create a presence there. Car companies have showrooms that look beautiful, but are not staffed with salespeople 24/7. The result is a very creepy feeling world that seems a lot like EPCOT after the park closes. All the lights are on and the eery new age music is still playing, but there's no one there, most of the time.

And when there is a meeting, there are a lot of people walking around barely clothed (free membership doesn't include Linden dollars to buy wardrobe, you have to pay to play there!). And these people communicate by "air typing" on keyboards that they can't afford to buy. No one talks, they just type.

But there's a mad rush among some PR people to convince their clients that they simply MUST launch that new product or have that executive press briefing in Second Life to demonstrate how "with it" they are. I've been involved in technology in some form or another since the 1970s. That must be why I still don't get this one.

Take a look at Eric's 10 reasons and decide if you need to be there.

Top 10 Reasons as to why I still need to be convinced about marketing on Second Life

No TV allowed in Yum Brands Headquarters, or maybe Louisville doesn't get cable?

I watched with morbid fascination on Friday as a short piece of citizen video, backed up by local news cameras from WNBC-TV, Channel 4 in New York, spent the better part of Friday in front of a Greenwich Village Taco Bell restaurant where rodents were running wild on the restaurant floor. This story ran virtually nonstop all day long on CNBC, one of the most influential media outlets for investors making decisions about which companies they should be placing bets on in the markets. It quickly blasted around the world on other news services, like FoxNews and the Associated Press.

Where was Taco Bell's owner, Yum Brands?

Issuing a single sentence tersely worded statement from its headquarters a thousand miles from the crisis in Louisville, KY.

Making it worse, whoever cobbled together this customer-unfriendly statement decided to use their standard press release template, so right after they insist that the rodent infestation is disgusting and unacceptable, they go into a mindless, completely-disconnected-from-reality solliloquy about what a wonderful company Yum Brands is and what a great place it is for women and minorities to work.

Memo to Yum: Hey, guys, even the airlines know enough to stop advertising when a plane crashes. If you were going to issue a statement, even one as bad as the one you issued, at least have the good sense to leave off the chest-puffing boilerplate. It just looks stupid saying how wonderful your company is right after you apologize (grudgingly) for having rats in the kitchen.

I'm sure lots of women and people of color are just breaking down the doors to go to work for a company that doesn't even have someone trained to meet the media in a crisis PR situation like this. I'm sure they want to be on the front lines facing customers fearful of food contamination from bacteria and rodents. Sounds like a great challenge.

By not having someone on camera responding to the story, Yum has allowed its one franchise owner (or store manager if the store is company-owned, and that would be unconscionable) to severely damage the brand in the public's mind.

Taco Bell is already reeling from the e.coli issues earlier in the year, and the complete and utter lack of comprehension from corporate headquarters of how to deal with the public on this issue suggests that they don't really care. That may not be true, but it is the impression left when NO ONE from the company appears on TV to discuss and try to defend.

Have they even sent an operating executive to New York to find out what happened? That should be the least of it, never mind they should be sending a media specialist to help with the reputation crisis.

They will have lots of meetings in Louisville to pore over sales figures, scratching their heads about the decline, but they don't seem to make the connection between reputation and sales.

Where were the PR counselors when Yum decided on this closed-door strategy for communications?

But even in this story, there is an ironically funny epilogue. There's a screen-scraper website called bestsyndication.com that clipped this news story from the wires. The website uses Google AdSense to post ads on its pages relevant to the topic being discussed. Guess what ads are posted next to the picture of Willard (above)?

Yep, ads for restaurants and fine dining in New York.

I'm pretty sure that these restaurants, if they had any idea Google was serving them up next to a story on e.coli and rats, would certainly ask Google to give them a doggie bag instead.