http://gmfactsandfiction.com/w...ss-an-final-120408.pdf
the letter^
an article about it.
So GM admits to the U.S. that they have screwed the pooch in the past, they promise to do things better and talk about their current top of the line product... Interesting
the letter^
an article about it.
Dear Customer, G.M. Says, We've Improved
New York Times May 29, 2003
By DANNY HAKIM
DETROIT, May 28 - General Motors is ready to try the redemption card.
After lagging in quality rankings for years and long making cars that all looked alike, the company is preparing a provocative corporate image campaign that says it has turned over a new leaf and wants another chance.
Are you Honda-Toyota-Volkswagen drivers ready to oblige?
Redemption chic, of course, is in full bloom, with everyone from the Dixie Chicks to wayward college coaches to Winona Ryder trying it on. Now comes G.M., the largest auto maker in the world, though one whose United States market share has been dwindling for decades.
"The longest road in the world," reads the text of the first ad from the campaign, "is the road to redemption."
The ad, which will make its debut in magazines next month, is intended to be the first in a series. The text appears over a darkly clouded sky. Below, a road twists off toward a burst of sunlight poking through clouds.
On the facing page there is more text, interspersed with a few pictures of some of G.M.'s more exotic vehicles.
"Thirty years ago, G.M. quality was the best in the world," the ad says. "Twenty years ago, it wasn't." The last decade has seen "our long journey back," with much time spent "breaking out of our own bureaucratic gridlock" while learning "some humbling lessons." As the company has been duly chastened, things have turned around, readers are told.
"With quality at the core of our values, we're building the best cars and trucks in our history."
Could this be a made-for-TV movie or what!
The ads are by the General Motors corporate agency, the Troy, Mich., office of McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, part of the McCann-Erickson World Group division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The campaign will tackle different topics, like G.M.'s gains in short- and long-term quality rankings and its engine and environmental performance. (The environmental ads will surely be read with interest by groups like the Sierra Club, which is planning a campaign of its own against G.M.'s Hummer brand.)
"The message is simple," said Gary Cowger, the president of G.M.'s North American operations and the primary architect of the strategy. "We may not have done everything right in the past, but we've learned from it."
"There still is an important group of consumers who have stopped listening to us," he added.
John Middlebrook, G.M.'s vice president for marketing and advertising, said, "We're dealing with close to half of the market that doesn't consider us, or put us in the reject pile." He described the campaign as "5 percent mea culpa, 95 percent what's good about G.M."
Mr. Cowger said he was inspired by General Electric's "We bring good things to life" campaigns. He said G.M.'s new effort would take a very different tack from normal "call to action" advertising. G.M.'s current campaign, for example, focuses on getting people into showrooms right away by enticing them with big discounts.
"This is more relaxed," Mr. Cowger said, adding that it was a way to reintroduce buyers to the company.
So will it work?
"I have serious doubts," said Peter DeLorenzo, a Detroit advertising veteran who consults for DaimlerChrysler. "On the one hand, it's commendable they're admitting that in the past they built poor-quality vehicles."
"But I don't think it'll fly," he said, because the campaign is undercut by G.M.'s huge push to offer discounts.
"Now they're turning around and saying, well, we made mistakes, but you need to look at our products because we're making them better," he said.
José Rosa, a former G.M. marketer who is now a professor at Case Western Reserve University, said, "It's an interesting play. Let's be up front and honest."
"They're saying they've seen the light," he added. "But what also has to be offered, you have to have cool cars. You have to have cars that when people go in, they say, yes, this reflects me."
Clive Chajet, founder of the Chajet Consultancy, a corporate identity specialist, was also skeptical. G.M., he said, "must have felt or known that the image of General Motors was dreadful in order to take such a step."
He also was doubtful about the focus on G.M. as a corporation, because it is not itself a brand (like Ford or G.E.) and has little resonance with consumers.
"If they wanted to leverage the General Motors corporate image for the benefit of the brands, they should say only the most positive statements about it instead of digging up negatives," he said.
G.M. has made considerable strides in improving manufacturing efficiencies and quality rankings. In J. D. Power's most recent initial quality survey, the company ranked below Toyota, Porsche, BMW and Honda but ahead of everyone else, including the Ford Motor Company, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan and Volkswagen. The company's Cadillac division even ranked as the second-best brand in the industry, behind Lexus - though its Hummer brand came in dead last.
For many noncustomers, though, G.M. cars and trucks still leave much to be desired. David De Wald, a 34-year-old health and wellness program manager at Electronic Arts in northern California, is a car enthusiast, but he sticks to European cars and even stopped buying Saabs when G.M. bought the company.
Why?
Because they just don't seem as imbued with quality, he said.
"A perfect example is the Escalade," he said. The Cadillac Escalade is a sport utility vehicle that has been popular with athletes and rappers. "It's selling well and basically on the merits of it as a status symbol. But I don't know how anyone could sit behind the wheel of an Escalade and then behind a BMW X5, or the Porsche Cayenne, or even the new Range Rover, and think the Escalade is worth $50,000."
So GM admits to the U.S. that they have screwed the pooch in the past, they promise to do things better and talk about their current top of the line product... Interesting