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Reputation Management: Cadillac’s Project Pinnacle
Welcome back to Reputation Management! We are again revealing the underbelly of local automotive retailers—places like car dealers and service shops—with fictional service tales inspired by real customer reviews. How do we make these stories seem like they could really happen? Because of my years of experience with a Fortune 500 automotive retailer as a—you guessed it—reputation manager. —Sajeev
While working in the corporate office of CarCountry, one of the largest dealership groups in America, I never knew which dealership, which brand, and which part of the country would become a thorn in my side. And thanks to a rollout of the “Soapbox” customer review generation tool (automated text messages asking customers to leave online reviews) my workload addressing bad reviews and aggrieved customers grew every week as a fresh batch of dealerships adopted the software. My solution to address the rising tide: Hire a reputation management assistant.
I was not looking for a social media guru. Instead I went to Craigslist to write a posting that bluntly stated the need for someone with retail experience. This type of worker knows what it is like to deal with angry customers and not lose their cool. If you were waiting tables at a restaurant or swiping credit cards at the local mall, well, I absolutely wanted to hear from you.
I hired Lauren, a recent college graduate who was at the time working at a rat-themed pizza chain as a waitress. She was kind and patient, and she wanted to learn everything she could about cars. Perfect! She was hired.
Lauren’s first day included addressing a negative customer review for a Cadillac dealership. Unfortunately for her, Cadillac was in the midst of Project Pinnacle—a corporate strategy revealed in 2016 to reduce dealership footprint in ways that wouldn’t spawn lawsuits. Project Pinnacle was a new sales compensation program (outlining how dealers are paid for new-car sales), and that meant working with a new online dashboard with the same name. I explained to Lauren that Cadillac was making things more complicated to prioritize its highest-performing dealers. I neglected to mention that Project Pinnacle nearly caused a dealer revolt when it seemed that Cadillac brand chief Johan de Nysschen was out for blood.
Lauren got the gist of the hellscape when she logged into Project Pinnacle’s dashboard. The portal wasn’t just for reviews, as it was a one stop shop for all of Cadillac’s performance metrics. Like the variable-displacement engines that came decades before it, Cadillac’s Project Pinnacle was a slow, complex, unusable heap of virtual junk compared to the digital dashboards provided to us by tech giants like Facebook and Google.
We had to use Project Pinnacle, because Cadillac was watching the whole operation like a hawk. If we responded to a Facebook review on Facebook natively, for instance, we had to log back in to Project Pinnacle and mark the action as completed within 24 hours. If we didn’t, the store manager got an automated nastygram from a Project Pinnacle rep. I remember CarCountry’s Cadillac stores never getting in trouble, except when Project Pinnacle wouldn’t let us log in. (And that happened more than once.)
OK, enough backstory. To get Lauren the details she needed for a response for the bad review, we reached out to Greg, a veteran Cadillac employee who recently ascended to the rank of General Manager. I had him on speaker so Lauren could understand the mechanics of Reputation Management here at CarCountry:
Greg remarked, “Sajeev, why do you only call me with bad news? I thought our friendship was more than that?”
Greg and I, indeed, went way back. He sold my mother a 1991 Cadillac Fleetwood demonstrator when I was a sophomore in high school. When his dealership was hoovered up by CarCountry some 20 years later, I visited the store and asked for Greg by name. To my absolute shock, he remembered my mother, her small business, and the color of the Fleetwood we plucked from his used car lot. He then told me how great his honeymoon was in Barbados, all thanks to Mom’s travel agency.
Despite his great demeanor and skill, Greg was having a rough time as a General Manager. The previous manager had a scorched earth policy: cherry picking service department employees to take with when he left, neglecting every phone call and email in his final days, and—to top it all off—he spent a hunk of the dealership’s money on a cache of unsellable, aged parts purchased from his soon-to-be employer. That last bit tanked our profitability for several months, but I admit his plan was fiendishly brilliant.
“Sajeev, I don’t know why the guy didn’t just take a big ol’ dump on this desk before he left. That woulda prepared me for what I am dealing with now. I spend most of my day apologizing and repairing the damage he created.”
My cell phone buzzed. Greg had sent me a text, with an image.
“Please apologize to the customer on our behalf, like you always do; their newbie salesperson is sadly ignorant of how Cadillac’s CPO program works. It is our mistake, but I am at the mercy of the staff currently available for hire! Ask them to email me so I can try to make up for it. Now, did you get my text message?”
“Yep! That’s the fender emblem for a Cadillac Cimarron D’Oro.”
“HA! I figured you would know! It was sitting in a decaying cardboard box of those awful parts that we bought thanks to the last General Manager. I hope we figure out a way to unwind that deal.”
“Best of luck. Don’t worry, Lauren and I will take it from here.”
Lauren hashed out her reply using keywords from the review. I wanted to end my call with Greg on a brighter note, but the words out of my mouth did the opposite, “At least CarCountry finished their re-imagining the facility before you came onboard, right?”
“Brother, that damn parent company of yours absolutely ruined what was so great about this dealership. First they ripped up the walls to upgrade the wiring for CarCountry servers and telephone systems, and now this clinical, hyper-clean aesthetic. I don’t care if this new look is mandated by Cadillac, I would kill to be a General Manager in the pre Johan de Nysschen days.”
Cadillac’s generational shift, which began in earnest in the mid-2000s, didn’t appeal to fans (of all ages) living in places like the American South. I missed the “old-money” charm of the dealership’s chandeliers, paneled wood, thickly padded carpeting, and those burgundy and brown leather couches from my childhood. These days it makes me want a cigar and a glass of scotch—both acceptable daytime practices when the dealership opened in the fall of 1974.
“Just between us, the solid oak doors at the front of the dealership wound up in the bed of a GMC Sierra that went straight to my house. They were custom-made back in 1973, but they were headed to the dumpster before I intervened. Now, they are the front doors to my house. These days, my loyal customers won’t stop complaining about this place being like a Starbucks that does oil changes. It hurts my soul to see this brand’s decline.”
“Not that I am disagreeing with you, but Cadillac expects us to…”
“I could care less what Cadillac thinks right now, because I have been with them for 28 years. Between Project Pinnacle and the constant fires I am putting out from the last guy, everyone trying to squeeze blood out of this Greg-shaped turnip can go suck a lemon. Compared to the old days, Cadillac cars have tiny engines and forgettable names, and our largest competitor dealer talked their way into snatching 20 percent of our Escalade allocation. Plus, the lease deals right now are hot trash.”
I tried to explain Greg’s pain to Lauren, but it wasn’t until the launch of the Lyriq EV in 2020 that GM corporate had a quote of any substance on the matter: “Do you think the Cadillac brand is in good shape? It’s not.”
“I get it Greg, and I hope being a General Manager doesn’t change you,” I said. “Because when I think about Cadillacs, I think of you and smile.”
“Thanks buddy, you just made my day. Hopefully I don’t have to talk to you again soon, but remind your mother for the upteenth time that she needs to visit so we can GET THAT LEXUS OUTTA TEXAS!!!”
Greg was an old-school luxury car salesman surviving in a post-Lexus Covenant world. But he still embodied everything I admired about the dealership trade: Wise enough to know the game, but flexible and savvy enough to adjust to the Digital Era’s standards of transparency and (some amount of) accountability.
He also appreciated the work Lauren and I did. We tapped on keyboards, but our hands stank from taking out the trash. That’s reputation management, for ya.
The Reputation Manager will return…
Great story, file more! Sort of embodies how Caddy lost its cachet. My Grandmother only drove Cadillacs, but I don’t think I have or would ever consider buying one. I don’t need a giant SUV and a V or Blackwing would make me one of “those guys” …….bags. Also, these multi-six figure halo cars are never going to drive the aspirational message.
The number of dealers has been a major GM issue for a long time. GM had many dealers when they were near 50% market share but today with so many MFGs and only 18% they have too many.
They would like to lose a good number of dealers but it is difficult to remove them. They can’t afford to buy them out. They just can’t revoke a franchise. So they make the weaker dealers work harder and cut allocations to them to try to starve them out.
In some cities they have 3-4 Cadillac dealers to one Lexus. It makes it hard for all 4 to make money. This leads to poorer service and often poor dealers not being removed.
As for the product problems they started a long time ago. When they went corporate on the platforms and made a Cadillac nothing but a styling exercise. Many thing the Cimarron was a bad rebadge it was far from the only one they did.
Building an image takes time and good work. Once you lose it you really have to start over. GM has shown they really don’t understand the segment. Or their are people inside that will not let the people who do understand do what they need to do.
JDN when he was at Cadillac did have the right idea on the products but then they made the fast turn to EV that will hurt them. Some EV is ok but not all EV as it will take years to get the market all EV.
I agree on the Six figure cars that they have not earned the right to sell them yet. .
I see the future for Cadillac as being a struggle if they do not bring or retain more ICE modes.
The XT4, XT6 are great products as well the sedans they have.
I just saw a video on the IQ and it is nice but very flawed. It has no leg room. It is $130K and will see 50% decline in value in a year. It is 8000 pounds.
Before anyone says I’m anti GM, the truth is I bleed GM. But I’m also honest about the poor direction of the brand.
Ford also has much the same issues as many want to kill Lincoln. Other in Ford want to save them. They are now just fancy Fords and no cars. Both GM and Ford can do much better than the competition but leaders are just making the wrong choices and also have to deal with other issues like the dealers.
I remembered when I poked around cars in the junkyard, under the hood you could see the differences between the models. Chevy had wires laying all over the top of the engine, and Cadillacs had many more loom supports and fasteners. Buick and pontiac were better than chevy but not much. Was this just my imagination? Things like that would boost reliability.
Having friends working for GMX/Buick dealerships I can tell you that they haven’t done much to help the dealers either. They just haven’t done nearly the same level of damage they have done to Cadillac. Cadillac has products that would interest me but the interior quality and the price points they have been asking have been problematic but the dealer attitudes were the final nail in the coffin for me.
That should have been GMC, not GMX. Edit button?
Taylor Cadillac in Toledo still looks like that image. I don’t know how they escaped the mandatory upgrade of that era, but they did. Sadly, it just seems dated and worn now.
Wow, I just looked them up on Google maps. Indeed, how did they get around that?