Reputation Management: To Praise Oklahoma In Cinquains

Welcome back to Reputation Management! Here we reveal the underbelly of ordinary 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

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright is credited as saying “The architect must be a prophet, a prophet in the true sense of the term. If he can’t see at least ten years ahead, don’t call him an architect.”

This also applies to car dealership architecture, as seen in Wright’s only automobile dealership, the Hoffman Auto Showroom in New York City. That showroom inspired a big-dollar BMW dealership owned by CarCountry in Kansas City, one that I was genuinely excited to visit as part of my Reputation Management duties. I took photos of the joint like a tourist, and my store-level co-workers admired the effort I put into documenting their delightful workspace.

This place was (is?) an architectural gem in the great state of Kansas, but a more recognizable architectural transition for automobile enthusiasts happened about a decade after Frank Lloyd Wright’s passing. And it was just a few hours south, in a suburb of Oklahoma City (OKC).

Car culture often began on pristine, post-war city streets like OKC’s Automobile Alley. The alley was located off Broadway Avenue, which turned into the Broadway Extension (a.k.a. Highway 77) as time passed. And by extension (sorry), this road took both people and car dealerships out of the city center.

Into the booming suburbs we go, but the reasons why this happened aren’t germane to our story. So instead meet Bob, a man with a vision for an Auto Mall like no other. He made a name for himself in Oklahoma City, then later in a suburb where his brick-clad Auto Mall was fashioned in a Brutalist, 1970s Postmodern style. The dealerships seemed modest by themselves, but were a domineering presence when combined into a mall on the highway.

I fondly remember spotting the original model for Bob’s Auto Mall in a hallway behind his Buick showroom. It was just as delightful to behold as the Frank Lloyd Wright theme of the BMW store in Kansas City, even if my co-workers now looked at me as if to say, “what the hell is that dude from corporate doing instead of his damn job?”

***

Ask any Reputation Manager (or any small business owner) what they think of Yelp and you’d better be prepared for a long-winded answer. My co-workers working the front lines at Bob’s Auto Mall had nothing but open disdain for it. I stopped mentioning the source of their reviews, as unnecessarily raising the blood pressures of my brothers in the Sooner State is not my modus operandi.

As this review suggests, one of the perks of owning an Auto Mall is that a customer might not fall in love with a Toyota Corolla, but they won’t leave the premises without taking delivery of a heavily discounted Civic first. The architecture lends itself to collecting good reviews for at least one brand, especially after I implemented the aforementioned Soapbox review generation tool for all CarCountry dealerships.

But it hits different when an Elite Yelper gets our call to action, and drops you a positive review. Thanks to Yelp’s gamification of their reviews, earning kudos from an Elite Yelper is like getting a gilded statue of yourself in your hometown. This is the moment when the Reputation Manager buys a lottery ticket, but only after sending a congratulatory email to the store manager and their boss. Too bad I forgot how much my cohorts hated this platform.

“Sajeev, do people on social media really have nothing better to do than write poetry about going to a dealership?” asked Milton, the general manager of Bob’s Toyota dealership. While Milton appreciated the need for people to play games on their smartphones, his disdain for the vitriol hurled at service workers on Yelp was valid. I talked him down, explaining why this poem is a good thing, and why his boss can celebrate this for the Auto Mall as a whole.

“You know that my boss will not understand why this is a good thing? He uses a Blackberry.”

“Good point, I’ll send another email clarifying my position so everyone knows why it’s okay to see this as a win.”

Just because you didn’t make a sale doesn’t mean someone’s Yelp review won’t spur more foot traffic to your showroom. So I made it clear that no further input from the store was needed to respond to this Elite Yelper. The icing on the cake was that I had a college intern working for me, and he was sharp as a tack. I showed him the review and told him to put his time at Davidson College to good use by responding back with a beautiful cinquain.

Dang, that cinquain-spitting “kid” is good. Maybe he had ample reason to reject a management trainee job offer from CarCountry after graduation.

Hopefully, he enjoyed his summertime romp with Reputation Management, and perhaps I can take some credit for that. His future is bright, unlike that of the vintage brick buildings in Bob’s Auto Mall.

Much like the destruction of Frank Lloyd Wright’s only automobile showroom in 2013, Oklahoma’s home for multiple car brands couldn’t stand the test of time unscathed. Retail architecture must meet the demands of the consumer over time. Bob’s Auto Mall also sought compliance from manufacturer branding standards. Brown brick, spaceship shapes, and wood paneling from the Era of Malaise could not endure.

As much as I loved working in this stunning, James Bond-worthy office when visiting Bob’s Auto Mall, CarCountry hired a third-party consultant to suggest ways to dress up the space for modern consumers. I get the intent, but I have a problem with statements like “paint all wood bead boards a warm tan.”

Let’s be clear about one thing: this traveling Reputation Manager hit his stride in that wood-paneled, Oklahoman Cylinder of Authority. I felt the gravitas of a hundred Dodge Diplomats flying off the lot with every keystroke, as people came into my office and treated me with a level of respect I couldn’t possibly fathom anywhere else.

Darn good

To be the king

Big fish in a small pond

Social Media is wild stuff

Thanks Bob

The Reputation Manager will return…