Chrysler Buries PR in the Corporate Bureaucracy

Chrysler’s top spokesperson resigned this week, and going forward, the PR department will report to the head of HR.

Does this make sense to you? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Chrysler was recently acquired by Cerberus, a private equity firm with a history of being tight-lipped (most PE firms are). And Cerberus brought in a new CEO, Bob Nardelli, the guy who did such a wonderful job at Home Depot.

Said Nardelli: “Now that Chrysler is an independent company again, we are taking every opportunity to realign functions in a more holistic manner that allows us to more effectively drive company strategy.”

Really?

There’s no doubt that a lot of important communication happens to and among employees. But that’s the only connection I can see between PR and HR.

The argument that Chrysler is now a privately owned company doesn’t wash with me, either. There are plenty of large private corporations out there, and most have their PR team properly aligned under a corporate communications head or a marketing head.

As a consumer company in the Internet age, and in the face of global competition, the last thing Chrysler needs is to stick its head in the sand and bury PR and communications inside its corporate bureaucracy. But that seems to be the “strategy” that Nardelli is referring to.

PR needs to have direct access to the C-suite and a seat at the table when important business decisions are being made. That’s how PR can have the most positive impact on corporate strategy and success.

Now, when every consumer can tell the world what they think via the World Wide Web, is no time to take a giant step backwards in valuing the communications function. If Nardelli was truly aligning Chrysler’s operations to more effectively drive corporate strategy, he’d be moving the head of PR into the office next to his.