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Montgomery
PRCA Enters World of Groundbreaking Automotive PR
Both speakers said they or their counterparts in the company at the time were faced with credibility issues when reporters wanted to break the story that their respective plants were coming before the official announcements. Sewell said she was placed in the position of not being able to deny or confirm an erroneous Washington Post story that Mercedes had chosen North Carolina for its new plant. She told other newspapers and media outlets that called in response to the Post story: “If you have your own sources, you have to run with the story, but don’t let the blind lead the blind.”
For the two years from the Mercedes announcement until the time production actually began, Sewell said she had to do public relations work with “no product, no plant and no jobs.” What she did was build relationships, build key constituencies and manage issues. Mercedes created a statewide communications group of key people in the community whom the media turn to when they want a quote about automobile manufacturing chamber heads, economic developers, university professors etc. These ambassadors met first weekly, then monthly, with Sewell and other Mercedes executives to hear the company’s position statements and get copies of Q&As, so “they could carry the proactive message we wanted,” said Sewell. Mercedes also took 17 journalists to Germany to show them a Mercedes plant in operation that they could report about to the people of Alabama. “That’s how Alabama started to realize the personality of Mercedes,” she said. Morrison said, “Looking back, we should have been out a little more” like Mercedes. Honda got its Alabama plant in Lincoln up and operating in 19 months, a record for Honda. The plant engineers and others were so focused on getting the plant into operation that they spent little to no time in the community, he said, which left Honda with a reputation in Alabama of “being mysterious.” When Morrison joined Honda Manufacturing of Alabama a year after its announcement, he had to immediately begin “community building and building internal and external networks.” Still, the focus is on building cars. The demand for Odyssey mini-vans is so great that even the morning of Morrison’s PRCA speech, the local Honda dealer told him not to waste his time giving speeches but to get back to the plant and make cars. In addition to building relationships in the community, Morrison said Honda has been involved in environmental issues related to the plant. The plant has had a positive effect on the community by helping Lincoln establish a water purification system, he said. |
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New
York native Linda Sewell was on the site selection team that chose
Alabama as a location for the Mercedes’ M-Class sports utility
vehicle plant and has been responsible for all the public relations
activities associated with the M-Class since its inception. “Because
I was selected early in the process, I was involved not only in
public relations issues, but also the business decisions that would
form our company,” Sewell said. When public relations professionals
are able to weave their way into business decisions, “that’s
when we can be most effective,” she said. 
Although
Mark Morrison didn’t come on board at Honda until a year after
the plant announcement, he said Honda’s corporate affairs
office in California, which handled public relations at the time
of the announcement, also faced “media literally listing other
states where Honda was supposedly going.” Honda too had to
maintain its credibility by neither denying nor confirming the stories,
he said. The day before the official announcement about Mercedes
in Tuscaloosa, the company’s executives wanted to give the
Wall Street Journal, which had promised front page play, and “Good
Morning America,” which promised lead play, exclusive interviews
so those outlets could have stories before the 9 a.m. announcement.
“I had to stand up to the executives and say, ‘Sorry,
no.’ Our long-term credibility was most important,”
Sewell said. “As PR professionals, we have to make those decisions
every day. If we don’t stand up for our principals, we are
not doing our jobs.” 