Bob Lutz veers close to earnings drop in his Fastlane blog
Well I'd say Bob Lutz is veering pretty darn close to mentioning GM's earnings drop in his latest post on a re-shuffling of GM's product plans. So ha... to those of you who say he can't talk about the "real news" at GM because the focus of his Fastlane blog is solely cars. Click this link and then scroll down to read the comments in response to my earlier post: GM & Boeing: Corporate Tell-It-Not Blogs. Looks like Lutz is pretty skillfully discussing both cars and GM's bottom line in his latest post. Go, Bob...
A re-shuffling of product plans is absolutely relevant to a discussion of...what was the Fastlane focus again? Oh, yeah. Product. To address the business issues insofar as they affect product plans is plainly within the boundaries of the blog's focus. If, on the other hand, Lutz starting talking about prospective labor issues surrounding an impending reduction in force...but he didn't.
Posted by: Shel Holtz | March 22, 2005 at 06:35 PM
"So ha!" eh, Debbie? Just think of the Boeing guy touting the 7x7 and dissing Airbus, and then saying, didya know our CEO had to leave because he was preying on a 48 year old woman in our DC office? He had to go because he was acting, well, ya know, French. Or, I know they just sent our former CFO to jail, but how about those real low seat-mile costs on the Dreamliner? Or, BTW, yeah we purloined a carload of Lockeed Martin proprietary info, but trust us when we tell you it's better to lease $25B worth of tankers than buy them for $20B.
The point is, this company needs a continuous PR crisis management campaign, and a sales guy's blog doesn't begin to suffice and in fact can make things worse. It's more than a s t r e t c h.
Posted by: Michael Lent | March 23, 2005 at 07:05 AM
Michael,
You're good! You should take over Randy's Boeing blog. Much juicier and more fun to read!
:)
Posted by: Debbie | March 23, 2005 at 09:04 AM
Shel,
I think we're splitting hairs. My point is that Bob Lutz got *just close enough* to making a veiled reference, if you will, to the business issue of GM's slashed earnings forecast. That's enough for me.
Posted by: Debbie | March 23, 2005 at 09:51 AM
Man, you're easy. I'm still not convinced that he has to deal with the matter at FastLane at all. But, if you feel he should, that hardly counts.
Posted by: Brian | March 25, 2005 at 12:18 AM