In the latest copy of Newsweek, there’s an article entitled “Saturn was Supposed to Save GM.” The story conveys how Saturn, a GM brand with so much promise (the first new brand in 70 years at GM) and so much potential, was squashed due mainly due to internal politics. The situation at Saturn began with a new factory outside of Detroit and joint decision making and now has descended to one in which the company will likely be phased out by 2011.

That got me thinking about the ramifications of the missed opportunity Saturn had from a brand perspective. And that’s a big tragedy too. However, what the rest of today’s marketers can learn from this is significant:

Internally, everyone needs to get on board with the new brand or get off the boat.
To some this may be extreme, but you can’t launch a brand successfully long-term without total (or at least an overwhelming majority) buy-in from the inside. Saturn touted itself as “A different kind of company. A different kind of car.”And at the dealer level and Saturn plant level, this brand promise ran true at first. After all, at what other time could you witness all the salespeople at the dealership assembling to applaud every time a Saturn was driven off the lot? At what other time could you imagine car owners flocking to the plant where their car was built for a barbeque?

Unfortunately, engineers and executives at other brands under the GM umbrella resented Saturn for its bold new road. For marketers, this equates to what happens when people from within say things like, “That’ll never work” or “This is the way we’ve always done it and it hasn’t failed us yet.”

Those kinds of thinkers are a detriment to a brand trying something new in the name of moving a company forward. In GM’s case, instead of viewing Saturn as an opportunity to help GM truly compete with the Japanese, it let that potential leader brand become an internal enemy when it didn’t have to be.

From an advertising perspective, I can remember once using Saturn in one of our presentations as a case study for not only thinking different about car making through its poetic and powerful ads but the brand’s champions (the dealers) actually living that identity on a daily basis. But when that thinking doesn’t extend to the corporate level, it’s difficult to mobilize the troops consistently under one unified brand when you can’t unify yourself.

Sure enough, GM’s management’s inability to invest suitably in the Saturn brand (financially and emotionally), caused years to pass without new production of new Saturn models. This is what we call Paralysis by Analysis. You’ve probably heard the phrases that accompany this: “Let’s study that further,” “Let’s think about that some more and come back to it soon.” Yada yada yada.

Before I was an agency owner, I once asked another agency owner how he was able to sell such good work through internally. He said:

“When you’re tring to do something so different, you give people the opportunity to understand what you’re trying to do in terms of the target audience. You research. You strategize. You tie that research and strategy back to how it’s going to connect with that consumer or business on an emotional level.

Then, if they still don’t want to join you, you have to look at them like Cancer. The sooner you cut the Cancer out of your system, the better your chances for moving forward as one solid group. The longer you let the Cancer fester, the more it spreads to others, who in turn become toxic to the culture.”

“So eliminate the Cancer as soon as you can.”

GM couldn’t act quickly enough to eliminate its cancerous individuals. Now, now only did those people have a role in taking down the brand of Saturn, they’ll be lucky if they don’t destroy GM entirely altogether.

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