Editorial
Front Page - Friday, July 31, 2009
Volkswagen community relations specialist explains her role
Samara Litvack
As community relations specialist for Volkswagen Group of America’s Chattanooga operations, April Wortham acts as the liaison between Volkswagen and the community. Anywhere the company interacts with the community at large, Wortham is the first point of contact.
“That can be with the media either here at the local level, statewide, nationally, even some international,” she says. “I also coordinate a great deal with local elected officials and also civic organizations, philanthropic groups within the community.”
Essentially, where Volkswagen is concerned, you name it; she does it. If someone is interested in having a Volkswagen representative come speak to an organization, Wortham either accepts the engagement or find someone to do fill the position.
“What it all boils down to is helping tell Volkswagen’s story in Chattanooga and the surrounding areas,” she says.
The local portion of that story began little more than a year ago, when Volkswagen Group of America announced it has chosen Chattanooga as the location for its United States production facility. The company’s North American strategy had been in development for quite some time, the projected result of which being the sale of a million vehicles in the U.S. market by 2018 – 800,000 Volkswagens and 200,000 Audis.
“We’ve got a number of tasks to help us accomplish that goal,” says Wortham, and she lines them out into five distinct pillars.
Number one, she says is the product. First and foremost, Volkswagen is a car company. In the last year, the company has launched five new vehicles and it is continuing that trend with another three this year.
“Of course, that doesn’t even include the new, mid-sized sedan that we’ll be building here,” says Wortham.
Second in Volkswagen’s strategy is brand positioning, the best example of which is the company’s long-running Das Auto campaign, in which Max, the talking, black Beetle, teams up with celebrities like actor David Hasslehoff and legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight to promote existing and new Volkswagen vehicles. Newer versions of the ad campaign feature Max’s counterpart, Gus the microbus.
The third focus, says Wortham, is the Volkswagen dealers.
“Our dealers are very excited about the idea of having a car that they can say was produced right here in Chattanooga, Tenn.,” she says. “A lot of them have seen the new mid-sized sedan. A group of (American Volkswagen dealers) were taken over to Germany last year and shown firsthand what it would look like. And Volkswagen seriously considered their input in designing this for the American consumer.”
Volkswagen’s next order of business is its corporate structure. In 2007, the headquarters was moved from suburban Detroit to Herndon, Va., to be “closer to the customer,” says Wortham.
And lastly, she explains, is the local production, happening right here in the Tennessee Valley.
“Chattanooga is so important, not only to Volkswagen Group of America, but Volkswagen AG, our parent company,” says Wortham. When she “tells Volkswagen’s story,” she stresses specifically the importance of this city, how it fits into Volkswagen’s overall strategy and how the company is progressing with that strategy.
“We are definitely with the plan,” she says. “We are definitely on schedule for beginning production in early 2011.”
Wortham joined the Volkswagen team in late April, and her first order of business was planning the wall-raising ceremony that occurred on May 14. That project absorbed all her time until it was complete, and now she says her focus has shifted to being that liaison to the community, sharing the news of Volkswagen’s continued progress and being that “someone here that the community could definitely reach out and touch, and have here in Chattanooga that they could approach with their questions, different partnerships they wanted to explore with Volkswagen.”
Currently, she is the only person in community relations on a local level with the company, but she will be joined by someone else in early fall.
“That’s when we’ll really be able to carve out what we want to accomplish in community relations in Chattanooga,” she says. “Sort of personalizing it, I guess is the best way to put it, for Chattanooga. And so we’ll be able to really dig into that.”
Right now, everyone at Volkswagen’s main concern is getting the production facility finished and ready to build cars by the early 2011 projection. Once production begins, Wortham says her role at the company will definitely shift in a different direction.
“Right now, that’s the number one goal, is getting the plant built,” she says. “But once that’s up and going, then we’ll be able to sort of settle in a little bit and start to look more long term.”
After a career as a journalist, working for daily newspapers and an automotive trade publication, Wortham says the switch to Volkswagen has been a smooth one.
“This is an entirely new role for me,” she says. “In some ways, I’ve found it an easy transition, especially when dealing with the media. But then in other ways, it’s a whole new adventure.”
Whatever her emotion, she doesn’t let it show. She is confident in her role as community relations specialist and represents Volkswagen in a professional, personable manner. She is happy with the path down which life has led her and is excited to see what challenges and opportunities Volkswagen – and Chattanooga – hold for her in the future.
“I’m very excited to be in Chattanooga, not just with Volkswagen, but in this town, in this area, because I’ve been very much welcomed by everyone,” she says. “(I) just continued to be overwhelmed with the support that the community has offered, of course not only to Volkswagen, but to me personally.”
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