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Lee Iacocca Practiced Persuasion At A World-Class Level, Lacking Only Twitter In His Arsenal

This article is more than 4 years old.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The late Lee Iacocca, who died at age 94 Tuesday night in Bel Air, California, is remembered by the automobile industry as a potent chief executive and master marketer.

His most remarkable talent was an ability to change minds and influence opinions, especially about which car to buy.  As a young man he became a fan of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and later made sure his subordinates enrolled in Dale Carnegie training courses. (Lesson one: “If you want to attract honeybees, don’t start by knocking over the hive.”)

After his unceremonious firing from the Ford Motor Co. in 1978, Iacocca joined Chrysler Corp., seizing the reins of leadership when the company was running out of cash. To avert bankruptcy, he approached the U.S. Congress for a $1.8 billion loan guarantee, which would allow the nearly insolvent automaker to borrow from banks.

© 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP

Almost magically, Iacocca’s speech and personality overcame skeptical lawmakers and disbelieving bankers. He prevailed by using native persuasion instincts, honed by years as a Ford sales executive whose first job was influencing Ford car dealers to order cars from the factory.  One of his biggest triumphs as a young assistant manager in Philadelphia was the “56 in 56” campaign in 1956 to combat flat sales. His finance plan entailed 20% down and $56 a month for three years.  Senior Ford executives noticed his talent.

Intuitively, he understood that “56 in 56” would imprint itself in the brains of shoppers. They would think about those numbers, wonder about them, ask questions, discuss them – and then many would buy. A mechanical engineer by training, Iacocca’s grasp was profound of what experimental psychology has proved again and again.

At Chrysler, he pioneered the practice of appearing on television to extol the virtues of K Cars and minivans.  “If you can find a better car, buy it,” he proclaimed, an outrageous exaggeration given the company’s quality ratings, which nonetheless seized consumer attention brilliantly.

His championing of the Ford Mustang was masterful. Though many others at Ford could claim more credit than him for development of the car, Iacocca believed that his strong personal pitch could convert shoppers into buyers. He used the 1964 World’s Fair as the launch venue. To reinforce his authority, Ford’s top PR man wangled coverage by Time and Newsweek during the week Mustang was introduced, and made sure Iacocca’s picture was on their covers.

Had social media been a thing in Iacocca's time at Chrysler, you can bet he would have been posting and tweeting furiously.

(Does this style of grand, vain and self-centered style media manipulation remind you of any current political figure? Bingo! To learn more about the similarities that Iacocca bore to POTUS, read “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter” by cartoonist

Scott Adams.)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Few auto executives are blessed with the talent to persuade as Lee Iacocca was.  Today’s brass has leadership skills, MBAs, technical knowledge and analytic powers aplenty.  They don’t have what Iacocca was born with and what is very difficult to teach: a gift to change minds.