GM May Need To Think About Killing Its Brand
Posted by: David Kiley on April 1, 2009
General Motors’ sales and marketing chief Mark LaNeve said today that when the company asks consumers about the GM brand these days, the results come back pretty bad. But when they ask people about Chevy, Cadillac, Buick, GMC…the results come back fine.
GM has been back and forth for 20 years about what to do with the GM brand. Perhaps they are close to deciding. Ditch it.
I was listening to National Public Radio recently and heard a sponsorship ad from “GM…Maker of the Chevy Volt and hybrids…blah blah blah.” My thought was: money wasted.
As soon as you hear this relevant message to a relevant audience, and they hear “GM,” I think the haze comes over most listeners’ eyes, ears and brains, and the message is lost.
Why not focus all that ad spend and messaging on…Chevrolet. It is GM’s most important brand. That NPR sponsorship should be for Chevy.
The talk now is that GM may go into a quickie bankruptcy in June, and be divided into two companies—a good GM made up of Chevy, Cadillac, Buick and GMC; and a bad GM made up of Hummer, Saab, Saturn and Pontiac that would be isolated and sold off or wound down.
Assuming the goood GM, in this scenario, is a public company, might it not be a good idea to ditch the GM brand name abd call the new entity Chevrolet Motors? or Chevrolet-Cadillac Motors. And get a new stock ticker symbol while you are at it of maybe CHEVY or CADDY?
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