Marketing Advice

How Cadillac Cows Inspired a Marketing Guru

The leather used to upholster the U.S. standard luxury car, the Cadillac, had just received sub-par reviews in a survey by JD Powers, despite the fact that GM was taking painful steps to use the best leather in the market. Execs at GM were puzzled; the brand had the most expensive leather among its competitors and “Cadillac cows” were distinguished by not having any scratches, fly bites, neck wrinkles or other so-called imperfections that plague heifers destined to become automotive interiors.

It was the early 1980s and Chris Stiehl, then GM’s manager of customer intelligence, was tasked with finding out why customers weren’t keen on Cadillac leather. They told Stiehl the leather did not look, feel or smell like the real thing. After some research it turned out that the Cadillac cows were too pampered, while a plastic coating intended to protect the integrity of the “perfect” leather masked that familiar smell and feel that defines a car with leather seats.

It was a light-bulb moment for, Stiehl who has since made a career out of helping companies learn how to identify their customers’ needs.

“The bottom line on that project is that we shouldn’t assume what the customer wants, we should let the customer decide,” says Stiehl, now president of Stiehlworks, a San Diego-based firm that he founded in 1999. “The customer does not want to pay a fortune on leather seats and then get something that looks, feels and smells like naugahyde.”

Stiehlworks is a small marketing consultancy that focuses on identifying the voice of the customer through research, surveys and studies. The company has worked with private businesses, government agencies and nonprofit organizations. Stiehl’s first book, “Pain Killer Marketing ,” will be published in April. 

Stiehl says that businesses often ask the wrong questions – for example, if a customer prefers product A or product B, when they really would like something completely different. Or more often, they fail to listen to what the customer’s pain really is. 

“Really learning how to listen to customers is important. That’s the thing that has changed my career,” says Stiehl. “You have to listen to how the customer thinks and how they define the problem.”

“Really learning how to listen to customers is important. That’s the thing that has changed my career.” – Chris Stiehl, StiehlWorks 

The next step, Stiehl says, is correcting mistakes. GM, for its part, quickly did an about face and corrected the problem.
 
How?

One of Cadillac’s employees who worked at the management shop (maintaining the managers’ cars) also once worked for Jaguar. He told Stiehl that Jaguar would spray essence of tanning agent into the cars before returning them. Taking that feedback, Cadillac introduced a new, thinner coating that retained the softness and texture of leather, while releasing the tanning-agent smell associated with fresh leather. 

And instead of eliminating fly bites, scratches and other marks as “defects,” Cadillac embraced what they now call “natural markings,” in light of what the customers called them, Stiehl says. 

Stiehl’s $20,000 research resulted in Cadillac saving $3 million each year on leather. 

     
Learning From the Japanese

Japanese carmakers were leading the industry at the time Stiehl began working at GM. The world’s largest car manufacturer was determined to find out why. But Stiehl learned firsthand that GM was getting it all wrong when trying to figure out why its cars weren’t selling. It was the Japanese that showed him the way.

Stiehl and his team displayed a Chevrolet Cavalier, a Nissan Sentra and a Toyota Corolla – minus the nameplates and other identifying marks – to consumers in a Minneapolis, Minn. auditorium. The consumers were allowed to do everything people typically do in showrooms, except test drive the cars.

“When they did that, the Cavalier actually won the competition. That was very puzzling to us, because the Sentra and the Corolla were both selling way more than the GM product,” Stiehl says.

In addition to the test showing in the auditorium, GM also conducted surveys aimed at discovering what customers believed were the most important aspects of the car. They also asked the consumers to list the features and attributes they would most like to see. GM, in addition, had Fisher Body’s 7,000 engineers do the same thing.

“The engineers’ lists and the customers’ lists were totally different. So here we are – the people designing and building the cars have totally different ideas [of what the consumers want] than the people they are selling the cars to,” Stiehl says, recalling his astonishment at the time.

One of his discoveries that stood out was the critical importance the engineers placed on the power lock system, believing consumers were aligned in this perception. It did not rank nearly as high for the Minneapolis consumers in the study. Stiehl realized had something to do with the high-crime profile of Detroit, compared to that of Minnesota, in the 1980s.

“GM was putting a lot of money into [market research, focus groups, etc.], but into the wrong things,” Stiehl says. “They were putting a lot of money into evaluating design A vs. design B vs. design C; but they weren’t putting money into ‘Does anybody care about this?’ ”

The big revelation came when Stiehl was on vacation at Disney World, visiting Epcot Center’s General Motors exhibit. He noticed a small group of Japanese men, wearing suits and holding clipboards, studying U.S. vacationers as they climbed in and out of GM cars. Stiehl realized the men were taking notes whenever someone would gesture or make a comment about the car.

“They were going to the GM exhibit to learn how Americans’ approach cars. Here it is our exhibit and we weren’t doing this, but the Japanese were,” Stiehl says. “I thought, ‘How stupid are we?’ ”

Teaching Others How to Listen

San Francisco-based M Squared Consulting Inc. conducts independent customer assessments for its business customers. Stiehl’s work has helped M Squared pinpoint which questions will ensure the most relevant and accurate assessments, says Lori Rhodes, the company’s vice president of business development.

M Squared has an ongoing professional relationship with StiehlWorks.

“When our clients really want to assess what the voice of the customer is – Chris’s expertise takes it one step further,” Rhodes says. “So often, our clients think they are in step with their customers; but they can get it wrong.”

““So often, our clients think they are in step with their customers; but they can get it wrong.” – Lori Rhodes, M Squared Consulting Inc. 

She even had Stiehl do an independent assessment of the work M Squared was doing on behalf of a longtime client. Stiehl’s assessment, Rhodes recalls, turned up a few items of importance, or “care-abouts,” that M Squared had overlooked.

Underscoring Stiehl’s insistence on asking the right questions, Rhodes explains the importance of keeping an open mind when formulating questions, remaining objective in order to field as much qualitative feedback as possible.
 
“In the area of customer satisfaction, I learned that it is imperative to have an objective approach,” she says. “Part of [Stiehl’s] methodology is that it’s a 45-minute interview, but you have to really let them take you where they want to take you,” Rhodes says.

Learning what drives consumers is more difficult now than ever, says marketing executive Beverly Kothe, a partner at The Norelli Group, based in Charlotte, N.C. The increased fragmentation of consumer preferences, she says, means companies that make assumptions are likely to drop the ball.

“I am occasionally surprised at how wrong they get it, which mainly has to do with preconceived notions about priorities of consumers, and framing the communication according to those notions,” says Kothe, echoing Stiehl’s skepticism of so-called conventional wisdom.

Or, in Stiehl’s own words: “Learn how to listen, and learn how to listen for pain. Set up your metrics to measure how much of the customers’ ideal you’re delivering.”

And if the customer demands what you believe is inferior leather, you would be wise to reevaluate your standards. As the cliché goes, the customer is indeed always right.