There, I’ve said it. In their rush to report that Elena Ford is the Blue Oval Boyz newly appointed director of global sales, marketing and service operations; the MSM seems to have forgotten Ms. Ford’s Mercurial past. In fact, the fruit of Charlotte Ford and Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos was appointed the head of Ford’s Voldemort (Mercury) in June 2004. Newsweek: “Elena is planning to roll out new, crisply designed models in 2004 to go after sophisticated young professionals who drive Volkswagens. Launching a youth movement won’t be easy and she admits the elderly customers ‘don’t fit perfectly into our strategy,’ but argues Mercury needs them to help fund the brand’s overhaul.” At the time, some commentators said that Ford was the only reason Ford kept plowing money into Mercury. Churlish perhaps, but how would you like to be the one telling the Ford family that you were pulling the rug from under Elena’s feet? So how does today’s press release spin this less-than-glorious chapter in Ms. Ford’s corporate career? Easy. They don’t.
“Elena Ford joined the company in 1995 as the truck advertising specialist for Ford Division,” FoMoCo PR reveals. “She has held marketing leadership positions representing all regions and brands around the world. Prior to her current assignment at Ford Credit, she has served as: director of North America product marketing, planning and strategy; director of North America product marketing; director of Ford Division product marketing; and director of Business Strategy for International Automotive Operations.”
OK, let’s assume history is bunk and Ford family nepotism didn’t lead to Bill Ford’s disastrous tenure at the top. What’s this new sub-Farley position all about, Alfie?
“In a telephone interview today, Elena Ford said her previous marketing and international assignments prepared her for a job channeling all of Ford’s product advertising and marketing messages worldwide into a single voice,” Automotive News [sub] reports.
“The challenge will be to concentrate my efforts on three or four main tasks rather than spreading them over 10,” she said. “For one, I’ll have one global creative director for each product launch rather than a creative director in each country, starting with the new Focus.”
Worrying: the use of the word “I.” Equally worrying: is Ms. Ford seriously suggesting that Ford will now have one transnational product director for each new product?
Even if we assume that Ford will offer the exact same model globally, is that really such a good idea? How can a single marketing director know the automotive gestalt in, say, Russia and Brazil? Even thinking purely of logistics, without a corporate jet, how can he or she coordinate simultaneous launches on a planetary basis?
OK, Elena’s probably got her own jet (liveried to match her yacht), which she could lend the product guru. But the more I think about this “one Ford” concept, the more I think it will be the death of Ford. In fact, Ford Death Watch under construction…
Yikes, just when you think the Ford empire is starting to get things right … Elena surfaces again. Weird that they excised Mercury from her resume!
channeling all of Ford’s product advertising and marketing messages worldwide into a single voice
That sounds like a mistake about to happen.
I’ll have one global creative director for each product launch rather than a creative director in each country
Really? And how will that single creative director understand each market.
Actually, there haven’t been too many problems with Ford advertising in Australia or Europe that I’ve seen.
Maybe that isn’t broken???
You missed the best part of the story, which is her personal life.
She was married at 24 to “Stanley Jozef Olender, the owner of Stanley O’s, an estate maintenance service in Southampton, New York.”
That didn’t last so at 30 she married Joseph Rippolone, 31, “a plumber and mechanic who designs heating and plumbing systems for Roulo’s Plumbing Company, a contractor in Detroit. His mother is a business representative for Nynex in Port Jefferson Station, L.I. His father retired as a bartender at Casa Basso, a restaurant in Westhampton, L.I.” Link
Wow talk about crossing class lines. But, that marriage succeed to some extent. Wikipedia says:
They have six children. In 2008, they divorced by mutual agreement. Elena remains in Grosse Pointe Farms with their four younger children. Their two older children attend Providence College in Rhode Island.
OK Guys. She is single, and I hear she has a great personality.
Near luxury brands like Mercury or Buick don’t make sense when you can get a Ford or a Chevy similarly equipped for less money and a Lincoln or a Caddy for not much more. None of the other global car companies have a near luxury brand. Money put into the Mercury Milan could be better spent on it’s sibling MKZ. Not making the Milan might save enough money to be able to cut the price of the MKZ close enough to the cost of the Milan to make it superfluous anyway.
As for Elena’s tenure running Mercury, it’s not like the company gave her a lot of new product to work with. Jill Wagner’s boobs can move only so much metal.
Think Ford First – They’ve Got Talent
Elena was “fired” during Ford’s 30% headcount reduction during the fall of 2006. She was sidelined to get her the F out of product planning. One guy told me she reassured a team of engineers that “consumers would always keep buying SUVs.” I think there was also another story about her complaining and preventing Mercury from selling the Marauder with a supercharger or something else equally retarded…
Mulally needs to shitcan her already.
Good lord, Detroit is nothing but a real life Soap Opera, but sadly with real life victims. But I guess you can’t seen from the penthouse floor of your global headquarters. It’s okay though, you can always take it out of the UAW’s paycheck…
“The challenge will be to concentrate my efforts on three or four main tasks rather than spreading them over 10,”
….at least we have a good idea of the limits of her capabilities.
“The challenge will be to concentrate my efforts on three or four main tasks rather than spreading them over 10,” she said.
Huh??? Maybe it’s just me but I usually do fewer things better than I do many. I am also thinkin’ three or four things aren’t going to be enough to fix Ford’s problems; she needs to go back to doing ten.
If Ford asks for money I’ll e-mail every Senator and Congress member about Fords Class B stock and nepotism.
In the 70’s I worked in the back office of a small area department store chain for a couple of years. I think there were 8 -10 stores. Compared to everything else in the area they were upscale. Founding family owned. By this time they were down to the great-great-great grandchildren level.
You wouldn’t believe the number of bosses the company had that were family members.
You’d see some kid fresh out of college be the manager of a group of people that had worked for the company for 20-30 years. Some of the family members were good people. Some were dicks.
The company managed to limp on into the early 90s until the family age group that ran the company when I was there said “F it” and sold out. I think they saw the gene pool was getting shallow.
But they were privately held so their money their decisions.
If Ford comes to the trough, these kinds of questions and stories need to be brought forward.
She truly sounds like ballast to me – isn’t there a way Ford can get rid of her?
If she’s so freakin’ good then go and work for a competitor – she can learn some “secrets” or drag down other companies (but at least let people do their job at Ford.)
This whole story is SURREAL – some major stockholder older woman with the attitude and name of Romanian dictator Ceausescu’s wife and apparently little or no talent just keeps getting influental positions, one after another while the ship is sinking… WHY?
At the very first error THROW HER OUT OF THE BUILDING, period.
Elana has made so many critical mistakes, it’s ridiculous. But, she apparently has enough money in daddy’s trust fund to buy out all the family’s super shares… and maybe the whole company, so they give her a voice. The company’s employees cheered when she was moved out of product development. She’s a friggin idiot that on her own, would fail at managing any fast food restaurant.
So in 2004, Mercury was supposed to roll out cars that VW owners would want to buy? I see that worked out well for them. I’ve owned 4 VWs, and even though they’ve had some problems, there’s no way I would have considered a Ford product in 2004 unless it was free. Once the Fiesta comes, I might be interested, but not until there’s a diesel option.
And lastly, it’s awesome that she’s Starving Nacho’s kid.
Anyway, it sounds like she’s pretty clueless. So I guess that means she’s got upper management written all over her when it comes to Detroit.
Ouch. The biggest question facing Mulally was how he would deal with the family. This news illustrates that changing power balances in such an old company isn’t easy. Maybe it isn’t possible.
Elena may be a dog of a manager, but I wouldn’t necessarily use her Mercury experience to drive home the point. It’s been a dead brand walking for two decades now, and only an enormous investment of resources — and a dramatically changed mission — could have changed that.
The “one Ford” idea has always struck me as too generic of an approach. I get why Ford went to this extreme — anything less would have been stalled out by competing fiefdoms within the company. Alas, it’s one thing to share components across continents, and quite something else to unify marketing efforts. What an exercise in potentially embarrassing futility.
None of us know how she feels or much about what demons she might be carrying; hopefully none. Obviously being born into wealth doesn’t mean the child is property parented. Given what I’ve read of heavy drinking on the part of many in the family, the situation is all too understandable. This makes Bill Jr. all the more admirable for what he’s done for the Company. If his father had done what Bill Jr. has done, Ford would be running away with the market.
Relax y’all. Ford is a CAR company. It is not a modelling agency or a advertising company. She will not be within a million miles of any actual decisions about hardware. Which is, I think, the point. This is Mullaley’s way of giving her a nice office and a few toys to play with while the adults get on with the business of saving the company.
Speaking for myself, I have never understood any of the OEM’s advertising strategies. Never in my life has any automotive purchase of mine, or anyone I know, been influenced by any print, TV, radio or internet advertising.
So this seems like a rather harmless and innocuous place to let her play in the company without breaking anything.
But the more I think about this “one Ford” concept, the more I think it will be the death of Ford.
Exactly.
He who does not fine tune the product and message to the target market gets his, or in this case her, ass handed to them.
Wait for it.
I’ll have one global creative director for each product launch rather than a creative director in each country
This actually sounds like a good idea to me. It seems like Ford is moving substantially towards the “world car” theme (Fiesta, Focus, etc.).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Elena was a seatwarmer for Mercury during the demise of the Cougar (which I still think would sell well if they kept the product as fresh as the 1999 model) and the unbelievably out-of-touch pricing on the Marauder.
Sure the Cougar/Sable/etc was going down for many reasons, but the brand manager at Mercury shoulda realized that nobody’s gonna pay $34k (IIRC) for a tweaked version of a $25k grandma mobile.
I feel bad for Mulally sometimes.
Unbelievable.
After little Billy Ford thought he could run a company and all but blew it up, you’d think they would have learned.
But reality is that the Ford family voting block drove this decision. Family members have frequently been put in places they didn’t have the experience for.
Mulally is in a very difficult position here and probably had to accept the reality of this.
-jeff
DrivingEnthusiast.net
The article addressed Jan. 28th, 2009 by Mr. Schwartz premised he doesn’t have enough happening in his own family life to be so succumbed in the Rippolone and Ford families.
Wow, as YOU put it…at least they are working hard for a living and a healthy place in society whereas you must have lots of free time to dig up OLD gossip.
Take an inventory of your own life and when it is perfect, remember:
“People may often find you unreasonable, illogical, and self centered”, “We will forgive you anyway”.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough: “Give the world the best you’ve got anyway”.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God: “It was never between you and them anyway”.
May the Schwartz be with you…
Darth Vader