Wrestling The Giant - General Motors working on its public relations image

Automotive Industries,  Feb, 2000  by Dale Jewett

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Steve Harris wants to power bomb GM's crummy public relations image.

For journalists gathered at the North American International Auto Show last January, the sight of a General Motors executive being funny was as eye-popping as some of the concept vehicle.

But there was Ron Zarrella, the well-dressed of of GM North America, talking about the need loosen up as photos flashed on a screen -- Zarrella fishing, hunting and golfing, all in a three-piece suit. The program marked a dramatic departure from the standard operating procedure for GM executives -- stand up, read a speech from a Tele-Prompter, gird for questions from journalists and leave.

Zarrella's performance, and those of other GM executives at the auto show, was a crowning achievement for Steve Harris, GM's vice president of communications.

I think Steve Harris has done a great job in highlighting the change in GM's product development philosophy, and think some of his efforts are starting to take root with GM's outside constiuencies," says auto analyst John Casesa of Merrill Lynch Global Securities.

A year ago, Harris, 54, bolted from DaimlerChrysler after nearly a decade as ringmaster of one of the most creative, free-wheeling and highly respected public relations staffs in the industry. His mission: grapple with GM's huge, far-flung and- for many auto journalists -- unloved public relations group.

The General Motors culture has never encouraged anything less than a very formal relationship with the press, particularly for executives. Then with the boardroom revolt of 1992 that led to the ouster of Chairman Robert Stempel, a series of new cars with nagging quality problems and continuously failing market share, the executive ranks closed even tighter. GM's press got even worse.

In a bid to fix it's image problem, Chairman Jack Smith in 1996 broke with GM tradition and went outside the automaker to find a new communications chief, hiring highly respected John Onoda from Levi, Strauss & Co.

"That was an all-out pretty bold move," says a former GM public relations executive who asked not to be named.

With more than 700 people worldwide, public relations at GM is an empire. But like other parts of GM, it is an empire made up of a series of fiefdoms. Marketing divisions, manufacturing groups and engineering units had their own communications groups. Those groups battled others for resources. With little communication between the groups, more than once did journalists find themselves forced to choose between competing GM press events on the same day.

"They needed a strong bridge builder who could work at the board level," the former executive says. "But John didn't have the desire or the skill to build bridges with the operating units and PR suffered as a result. And I think he realized early that his family was not in it (Detroit) for the long haul."

Onoda left for Visa in 1998. The experience convinced GM that it needed a PR chief with auto industry experience.

The 1990s were heady years for Harris and his staff at Chrysler. At the start of the decade, with the automaker in the throes of another near-death experience, Chrysler's PR staff played the only card it had left -- talking about exciting future products such as the Viper, LH sedans and Ram pickup. Not only were the new products exciting, so were their introductions -- a Jeep Grand Cherokee that crashed through a glass wall, a Ram truck that dropped from the ceiling, leaping minivans and press kits in cereal boxes.

"Steve is open to virtually anything as long as it gets the message across," says Jason Vines, an alumni of Chrysler's PR staff. Vines is now vice president of external communications for Nissan North America.

"He was one of us," Vines says. "When we would present our ideas to the board of directors, Steve was right there saying it was the right thing to do, and he had the confidence of the directors."

But the 1998 takeover by Daimler-Benz knocked Harris out of the top PR spot.

"The merger was an absolutely exhilarating time," Harris says. "But I had gone from being the head of Chrysler's communications to a narrower job in product communications and reporting to a guy on the management board in Germany."

When GM called, Harris says it presented an opportunity he had never let himself dream about, even though his first job after graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967 was with GM as a lecturer.

But would Harris' freewheeling PR formula work at buttoned-down GM? At Chrysler, Harris and his staff made stars out of the executives. GM executives shun the spotlight.

"When I first talked to Jack Smith, Rick Wagoner and Harry Pearce, the one thing I made clear was that I needed a strong commitment from them to make this work," Harris says. "They gave me strong assurances and they've done nothing to disprove that.

"They are really busy guys, and talking to the press is not their favorite thing to do. But they've been just great," Harris adds. "Now we've started to push the envelope compared to GM in the past."