Blog 4: Ford Deploys Aggressive Public Relations Defense Against Donald Trump

Ford Deploys Aggressive Public Relations Defense Against Donald Trump

By Nicholas Van Zandt

Bad press for the auto industry is certainly nothing new for their public relations teams.  For decades they have had to deal with public pressures and criticisms regarding their off shoring practices to build their cars in countries with cheaper labor costs so that they can better compete against foreign auto makers.  For workers in US states that have long been dependent on manufacturing, particularly in the auto-heavy state of Michigan, any news of plant closures comes with fierce public outcry.

In his efforts to appeal to the working class voters in swing states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Donald Trump has attacked the auto industry for exporting jobs to Mexico.  He specifically targeted Ford stating that “Ford is leaving.  You see that, their small car division leaving.  Thousands of jobs leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio.  They’re all leaving.”  It would be one thing if this statement was made on Trump’s Twitter feed, but he made this statement at the first presidential debate in front of 100 million viewers.  Naturally, Ford had to go into immediate damage control, and rightfully so.

While it was true that Ford was phasing out the production of its small car models Focus and C-Max compact cars in order to start building them at a new facility in Mexico, their social media team had to go into overdrive to dispel the notion that this was going to result in thousands of jobs leaving as well.  For Trump, it is a very easy to understand without a great deal of context: Ford is closing down production and opening it back up in Mexico.  Queue the outrage!  Ford, however, is now stuck with the task of trying to explain a much more complex story stating that the specific models they are sending to Mexico for production are models that are far more popular in that country while the workers in America are being shifted over to SUVs and pickup trucks, which can be sold at a higher profit.  The smaller cars—due to declining gas prices—are no longer sell as well as they used to and so Ford had to restructure their production in order to stay ahead of the curve.

Once can see the dilemma in terms of messaging.  For Trump, he appeals to his supporters with catch phrases like “Ford is sending your jobs to Mexico”, even if it is not based in fact.  Ford, however, is left with a far more difficult task of refuting this overly simplistic statement by trying to explain 140 characters at a time how shifting consumer behaviors based on declining gas prices requires them to restructure their supply chain model and to transfer existing stateside workers away from small car production.  Instead, they have rightly focused on more easy to consume messages about how they have added more workers and invested more money in US based production facilities than any other American car maker.

 

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