Jill Lajdziak says it’s the retail experience that makes the Saturn difference.

Between the time we spoke with Jill Lajdziak and the publication of this interview, General Motors announced plans to close Saturn. Well, here’s another news flash: This doesn’t necessarily mean the end for Saturn.  And it certainly does not change the enlightened view Saturn brings to automotive retailing.

Saturn was never designed to be a “luxury” automobile, but you’d never know that while visiting one of its state-of-the-art showrooms.

The approach is almost majestic, with the gated dealership (if we must call it that), gracing a hillside.  Golf carts whiz past, delivering customers to cars.  Visitors are welcomed into a bright and airy space that nearly sparkles in the light.  It is all windows, floors of bamboo, sunshine and curvaceous furniture. 

Kids play in a playroom while moms and dads tap at laptops in the waiting area. The garage is so shiny and bright you could just about open a restaurant in there.  The pressure is so low you could almost feel a tropical breeze.

This is Saturn’s message, as Jill Lajdziak, its general manager, sees it. “We don’t think somebody who buys a $50,000 car is the only one who should get a premium experience,” she says. “I happen to think that $15,000 is a lot of money and our guests deserve the very best.”

What began as “a different kind of car-company” 20 years ago remains determined to live up to that ideal. In an open letter to the Saturn community, Jill announced that GM is exploring the possibility of spinning off Saturn as an independent dealer network that would source cars from all over the world.

As Jill wrote: “Difficult times sometimes yield the most innovative solutions, and those who are willing to take on the challenge will emerge victorious. Stay tuned.”

What do you see ahead for Saturn?

General Motors has had to make some tough decisions, obviously. Everyone is well aware of that. But GM has been very supportive of putting us in position to spin off or sell Saturn as an independent distribution company.

In many ways, this takes us back to our roots as a different kind of car company and gives us a great opportunity. We’re doing this because our retailers have asked us to vet out this alternative for the Saturn brand. The groundswell of support from Saturn owners since all of this news occurred as a result of GM’s liability plan has also been just overwhelming. It’s driving us to get to the right end game.

I’m very optimistic about Saturn’s future. We know that we’re a great consumer brand. We are a very loved brand in the marketplace. We want to continue to capitalize on our current product portfolio, but obviously we also need to make sure our business model is right for the future.

 So, we’re working through various alternatives. The great news is we’ve got one of the freshest product portfolios in the business. What we’re going to do right now is what we do best — and that is to be Saturn.

What was it like when Saturn was first launched?

It was very exciting. There are not many times in a career when you have the opportunity to create a brand, especially one that very quickly became so powerful in the marketplace. It’s a credit to the leadership team at the time, because they stayed very true to the mission and the vision.

The company’s value system married up with a personal value system. Doing what was right for our customers was easy because if a catastrophic situation happened, we’d get into the room and ask, “what should we do that is right for the customer?” And then, the answer became easy, and we executed it. People fell in love with the brand as a result.

Have any of those original core values changed?

No. Our company values — commitment to winning our customers’ enthusiasm, commitment to our team, commitment to honesty and integrity — those values have never changed.

What changes in a brand, and what should change in a company, are your strategies as you go to market. That is why today we have been able to continue through the ups and downs of the industry and still be a very well-liked brand.

Does that culture still include having a cult-like following?

Yes. It’s simply amazing. We have the ImSaturn.com social-networking site and the dialogue on there is incredible. It gives us an opportunity to interact with people who are interested in Saturn or who are Saturn owners. If you go on SaturnFans.com and read the chatter, you will see that there’s just a whole lot of passion for Saturn.

Would you ever again have those massive celebrations like you did with the Homecoming?

We never say “never” to anything. The world has become much more virtual over the years because everybody is so connected today. People don’t necessarily have the time to make a long trek to one location today the way they did back in 1995, either. It’s almost better to work the social networking aspect digitally now.

How do you keep your core audience while also attracting a wider audience?

Among other things, we’ve developed a quarterly magazine that reaches our loyal owners on an on-going basis. This really allows us to communicate with them about everything from our product to life in general. We augment that with e-mail communication to them, as well.

Another element of bringing our owners along with us is the great job that our retailers do. They know that the owner base is very important to our future and they do a good job with events and other ways that reach back to the owners.

It’s not unlike our retailers to send out a birthday card to their owners, or to make a follow-up call after they’ve been in for an oil change to thank them. These messages are common practice within the Saturn family, and it’s a way to reach the loyalists and bring them along on the journey as we attract new customers.

Is there a typical Saturn customer?

I’ve thought about that question a lot because we’re not the typical automotive brand. Because Saturn has such a good, strong product focus, as well as a retail-experience focus, our brand transcends generational lines. Our customers range from first-time buyers all the way up to older people and everybody in between.

One big reason why is that we offer a great retail experience that tries to be as convenient and time-efficient as possible. We treat people with trust and respect. Young people like that as much as older customers do.

We have found that, regardless of age, those who are interested in Saturn have a very progressive value system. They are generally much more leading edge in their thinking, in the things that they buy and the products they consume.

How do your cars align with that outlook?

Well, speaking for myself on a personal level, I just bought an Astra. You know why I bought it? I love to talk about the Astra. One, it just looks good. It has very much a European flair. It’s great on fuel economy. I actually bought a manual transmission, because I’m a progressive-minded person who is focused on fuel economy. I have a personal point-of-view that manual transmissions are going to be making a comeback.

I also really love the safety story for the Astra. It is now one of the safest small cars sold in the U.S. market. It has a steel “cage” around the four or five seats. It has more airbags than seating capacity. So, it not only has front, side, curtain and thorax airbags, it also has a pelvic airbag.

It has collapsible foot pedals, so in case of a front-end collision, the car will sense that and the pedals will collapse, which helps protect you from the knees down.

It also has active head restraints, which are never found in a vehicle in this price or class. So, if you’re going to get hit from behind, the vehicle will sense that, and the head restraint will come up and try to prevent whiplash.

How do you reconcile the European styling with Saturn’s All-American image?

You really have to go back to the roots of Saturn to answer that question. We are an American company that’s also a global company and we’ve never thought of that as a conflict. Some people might not remember, but when Saturn launched, we scoured the world for the best ideas in every discipline and not just in the automotive world.

We studied American Airlines at the time. We studied Southwest. We studied the best-of-the-best when it came to companies and brands that were successful. We were reaching out globally to find the best ideas.

Do you still apply ideas from outside the auto industry?

Absolutely. We learned, for example, from Lush, which is a very engaging soap company, where you can touch and feel the soaps at retail. You can fall in love with these soaps, which I never thought one could do! But you have the opportunity to get closer to the soaps, rather than just confining them to a bottle or package.

So, in a similar way, we now have a trim display of colors and fabrics in our showrooms.

You very seldom see this in an automobile dealership, but you can take a paint sample and swatch of fabric, set them on a car or truck, and visualize how they would look together. We want to give our customers, who are going to spend north of $15,000, an opportunity to engage with the car.

Do you see any parallels between Saturn and Apple?

I do. We have the good fortune of having an exclusive network, so we don’t have other products in our facilities. When people come in, it’s a great environment. We’re very focused on delivering on the brand promise to the consumer.

You can’t have just a marketing message. Your marketing has got to be in your actions as well as in your words. I could give you numerous examples where I get customer letters and they’ll tell me about retailers staying open late at night to take care of their service needs. That’s Saturn.

To what degree are the showrooms designed with women in mind?

That wasn’t a big consideration at all. We didn’t look at it from a male or female standpoint. When it comes to retailing, you’ve got to think about every intender that comes in the facility. It might be a male or female, it might be a new parent, mother or father. They want to make sure that there is a place for their children.

Some parents don’t want to have their children away from them. If you want to sit down and work with a consultant, there’s a special stroller you can put your child in so he or she is with you and not in a play area.

How do you want your customers to feel when they are in a Saturn dealership?

We want them to feel like they are in a place they can trust and to know that we want to be as convenient as possible for them. Everybody has different needs and different ways that they would like to be handled in the dealership.

Some people would like to spend three hours; others would like to be there for an hour. We want to be the most convenient, trusted brand when it comes to automobile retailing. We’re never quite there, but certainly always on a path and a quest to be there.

Your sales people don’t seem like typical car sales people.

The majority of our sales consultants have not been in the automobile business before. This gives our retailers the opportunity to leverage the strength that people who don’t have car business experience bring to the table. Then they can train them on how we want to do business from a Saturn standpoint, because it is different when it comes to automotive retailing.

Is there anything special about the training they receive?

Yes. Absolutely. As we prepared for this big launch of all of our new products, we took the network — and that’s some 11,000 people — through Saturn training and culture training. We thought it was very important to take some time with our retail owners.

We spent a portion of that training session going through the values of Saturn. Let’s remember that it is a commitment to teamwork and what it means to have a commitment to trust, respect and customer enthusiasm.

Then there was an exercise that was part of the training, as well. I’ll paint a picture for you. Around the table would be the owner of the store, maybe paired with a manager from another store, a sales consultant and service tech. Everybody goes through the training, not just together as a store, but also mixed in with people from other stores from around the nation or in that general market.

A bag of all these different parts is put on the table, and they are given instruction to figure out and assemble what is in the bag. They pull together as a team, with each playing a different role. So, now we’re displaying the value of teamwork and how that happens in daily life and in business.

And, lo and behold, what they end up putting together, by leveraging each other’s strengths, is a bicycle. A group of boys and girls who are six, seven or eight years old from the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs of America walks in and each team gives a bike to a child. That child ends up crying or is excited or hugs them, and there’s this wonderful emotional moment.

The educational part of this is that the team just created a moment of truth for that small child. They made that child feel wonderful — which is exactly what we have to do when we deliver a new Saturn car, truck or a used vehicle out of our stores.

If somebody is going to pay $15,000.00 for a vehicle, you have to make them feel that moment of truth, how exciting that is and make them feel good about that. That’s our job. That’s how we make a difference in people’s lives and make sure that we have a relationship with them down the road.

Yes, you’ve got to know your features and benefits. You’ve got to know where your competitors are. But you also need to know how to touch the consumer emotionally. Make them feel that you’re a brand that’s going to be there before, during and after the sale. And the only way to train for that is to go through by example and analogy. It’s a highly successful course for us.

Does Saturn find its competitive advantage in the culture it creates even more than the cars it sells?

We absolutely believe that our strong retail network is a competitive advantage. The industry has its highs and lows. Every brand and every company goes through tough points over time.

But if you’re true to your brand promise in the marketplace, then you’re going to weather through those patches. We have the loyalty that we do at Saturn because of our focus and our unique customer experience.

Is the no-haggle pricing still as important as it used to be?

No haggle, no hassle has become a little confused over time. The policy is there so customers don’t feel like they have been taken advantage of. If I’m a new Aura owner, I don’t want to find out that my neighbor three doors down paid $2,000 less for her new Aura.

Our retailers can charge whatever they want for their vehicles, quite frankly, by law. We would suggest that if our retailers feel the price is too high on the vehicle, that they would adjust it, but do so consistently, across the board, on all of their inventory.

Do you think that Saturn is still a model for the future of the auto industry?

Yes, because brands that win over time are brands that have a very defined brand promise in the marketplace and deliver on that both in terms of the product or service as well as the experience they offer.

That’s why Apple wins in the marketplace. That’s why Starbucks, over time, has been successful — they serve great coffee, but part of that is the retail experience of the Starbucks coffee shop. That’s why Target wins over time and is also a great brand.

Great brands transcend the product or service itself. If you’re really going to connect emotionally, you’ve got to offer something a little bit different in the marketplace. In Saturn’s case, we think the difference is a great retail experience.

--

JILL LAJDZIAK is division general manager of Saturn, responsible for the brand’s product planning, sales, service and marketing operations. She joined Saturn in 1986 and was previously the executive director of its retail operations.

--

SIDEBAR

Design Thinking

Until it discovered “design thinking,” Saturn thought that making its showrooms feel like living rooms was a good idea. “There’s a mental script at play when you enter someone else’s home,” explains Lara Lee, of Jump Associates, the consultancy that helped Saturn re-think its showroom design.

“We believe we need to be on our best behavior when we are being hosted. We shouldn’t be critical. We shouldn’t ask questions. We should nod and smile politely and we should save our critique for the ride home. That’s not the best way to shop for a car.”

So, now, Saturn’s showrooms are less like home and more like an “interactive museum,” featuring “hands-on exhibits, self-guided tours and touch-screen computers.

Customers can place magnetized strips of paint samples on Saturn models to see how finishes look, and they can drape large swatches of fabric and leather inside the cars to check out the upholstery options.”

This approach — “design thinking” —“focuses on people’s actual needs rather than trying to persuade them to buy into what businesses are selling. It revolves around field research followed by idea generation that often leads to unexpected results.”

[Source: Janet Rae-Dupree, The New York Times, 10/5/08]