Attention GM: Here are the top 5 marketing ideas for your reinvention

UPDATE July 22, 2009

Since I wrote this original post, I have engaged with several people at GM, including Christopher Barger Director Social Media, Mary Henige Dir. of social media, and I had a tweet answered by Fritz Henderson, CEO of GM. They are improving quickly. More here.

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ORIGINAL POST

This morning when I opened my Boston Globe, I found a full-page ad from General Motors. The ad and a new television commercial both say that GM is re-inventing. (I've re-written the newspaper ad text at the bottom of this post.)

Hey GM that's great and I wish you the best.

But I wonder if, during the reinvention of the COMPANY, you are really serious about re-inventing your MARKETING?

I see some tiny glimmers of hope. The new site at GMreinvention.com is quite good. I found some interesting and valuable information to check out on the site.

However, from the marketing perspective, the whole reinvention rollout seems to be typical GM, which leaves me a bit sad and depressed.

I fear for your long term survival, GM.

Here, then, are my top five things that you can do right now to accelerate this reinvention.

1) Fire your Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

From a marketing perspective, you've become addicted to the crack cocaine of big budget advertising. Everywhere I turn I see GM this and GM that and this has got to be really freakin' expensive. The television commercials, the "sponsored by" stuff, and other high ticket Madison Avenue marketing might make you feel good, but is it effective?

These days when people are thinking of buying a car, they go to the Web first! When people go to the web they are not looking for TV commercials, they are looking for information to help them make a decision. Your Web properties can deliver that (if you let the people who work on the web do their jobs). How about taking just a tiny sliver of that money you spend on TV and football sponsorships and giving it to the people who are doing the fledgling social media work that I see on the GMreinvention.com site so they can expand their efforts?

2) Show, don't tell.

The biggest problem I have with the whole re-invention launch is that it says a lot but doesn't deliver. For example, the text of the ad talks about "GM car," "Genuine GM parts," and "GM Warranty." Hey, you're GM, right? I didn't see any GM brands listed in the ad.

So why does the URL you provide me in the ad to get to my "GM dealer" insist that I "select a GM brand" before I can find the dealers in my area? I get a big fat red error message when I want to find a GM dealer!

Sorry, GM, it's just empty words when you tout the new GM, invite me to check out the new GM, ask me to buy GM products, and then go back to your stupid old ways of requiring that I know if I want a Buick or Hummer or Chevy or GMC truck or Saab or an Oldsmobile or whatever brands to happen to sell. How about letting me search for GM dealers? Or all GM SUVs? Why obsess about your damn brands?

3) Create the products that people want to buy.

Not much I can add on this one, but one thing does come to mind. If you rely on coercion techniques to make sales, then your products suck. When people want to buy a car, they want a good one. Your reliance on coercion such as “$5,000 cash back,” “employee pricing,” “free gas,” “ten year bumper to bumper warranty” and the like send signals to people that your cars are not worth the price.

4) Earn attention from your customers and potential customers.

There are four ways to generate attention. You can BUY attention with advertising, you can BEG for attention with Public Relations, you can BUG people one at a time to get attention with salespeople or you can EARN attention online by creating valuable information and publishing it online for free: A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like.

GM has a corporate culture around buying attention. That's probably because your executives came up through the advertising side of the business. The problem is that you over invest in advertising and under-invest in your Web and social media efforts.

5) Humanize your company.

Sorry to have to tell you this: You are a nameless, faceless, corporation.

Your ad in the newspaper today was signed by the CEO, but why no photo of him? Did he even see the letter that some marketer wrote on his behalf? The new TV commercial you launched today is an inane collection of stock photos together with a few cars. It is generic. With a few different cars, the ad could have been made by Chrysler.

What about the people behind the reinvention? I want to meet the car designers. I want to know who the person is in your company who chose that weird color of purple of my latest GM rental car. People want to do business with people. Hey GM! Knock knock! Is anyone home? Who the hell are you???

I really want you to succeed. But you've got to re-think your marketing. You've got to unlearn what you've learned about marketing. Now. Today.

OK, those are my five. Anyone got any to add?

Here is the text of the full page ad from today's Boston Globe.

To Our Customers,

While a lot is changing at our company today, one thing is not: our commitment to you, our customers.

We want to assure you that your GM warranty will continue, whether you already own a GM car or intend to buy a new one. Genuine GM parts will be supplied. GM-trained Goodwrench technicians will perform service. Simply bring your vehicle to your GM dealer and you will receive service.

If the dealership you usually visit will be closing, we sincerely apologize and regret that it has affected you. We stand ready to serve with one of the largest dealer networks in America. Please visit GM.com/vehicles/dealer for information on dealers in your area. We pledge to make your next GM experience a remarkable one.

At this critical point on our history, we cannot afford to lose your business. Or your trust. You have our word.

If you are in the market for a new car, I urge you to shop GM. We are open for business, with some of the best vehicles and financing rates available. When you come in, I encourage you to be a critical judge of everything – from your experience in our dealership, to the quality of our cars. We owe you nothing but the best. And we will deliver.

General Motors may look different down the road, but we are here to stay. By accelerating work that is already underway and making fundamental changes from top to bottom, GM will be leaner, greener, faster, and stronger. We’re not just rebuilding our company. We’re reinventing it.

Over the coming days, months and years, we will prove ourselves by being more transparent, more accountable and, above all, more focused on you, our customer.

I invite you to track our progress at GMreinvention.com. And on behalf of all the men and women doing the hard work of changing our company for the better, we look forward to showing you the New GM.

Sincerely,
Frederick A. Henderson
President & Chief Executive Officer
General Motors.

Comments

[Rachel Bryant]

David - Loved your #5 suggestion. You are so right - they ARE a nameless, faceless company. And that's why many outside of the Detroit/Michigan area (those that are or know GM employees) don't feel sorry for "Big, Bad GM".

I would argue that none of your other four suggestions will work unless they address and fix this one.

[John Lane]

I think your ideas are solid advice for new companies and older-but-not-quite-so-fallen-out-of-favor companies. But I'm not sure any of them — or all of them together for the next 5 years as GM tries to rebuild — will make much difference in GM's future success.

I think that's because they're missing one more reinvention marketing idea: start by showing us a big, hairy example of what the reinvention will bring.

Currently their reinvention commercial and site still highlight the same vehicles we weren't buying in the first place (http://www.gm.com/vehicles/?evar24=Reinvent_Sitelet). And the VO and stock visuals sound and look like what we expect from the old GM.

What I think people need to see is a vision of the future... a visualization of what reinvention means. (And I'm not talking about MORE attention on Volt. 40 miles on one charge isn't really that groundbreaking, is it?)

Perhaps this is idea is just an addendum to your "show me don't tell me" idea. The "shock me into paying attention" footnote to it.

Regardless, I enjoyed the post and think it's packed with great ideas for companies who want to market correctly in today's world.

jl

[Emilio Bello]

GM really need to read this post! Very good advices, I think I'm gonna use some of them for my self.

[Carol Cox]

Great post! I just watched the GM commercial on YouTube and completely agree that is more of the same that hasn't been working. Did you notice that comments have been disabled for the video? GM really doesn't get it.

[Elliot Ross]

All too true -

And though it may be part of #2 - GM has to get over its fallacy that near luxury or luxury must be equal to or greater than (=>) BIG

GM has never made money on smaller vehicles - because they always become econo-boxes

The Chevy Cobalt & BMW 3 Series are both classed as sub-compact cars - but only one of them is "desirable"

They gotta get to the <= formula ;-)

[Siobhan Bulfin]

Every corporation and medium to large organisation needs to sit up and read this post but replace GM with their company logo. Few exceptions. Great post.

[Cal]

Nice ideas. Will they listen? Probably not...

I think most corporations have a case of the "we know what we're doing" disease. When it's obvious that they don't have a clue.

If they truly want to reinvent the company they should scrap every brand, model, etc. and start over from scratch.

What do we do here at GM? Is the question they should be asking.

[Robert Parrish]

Well-said, David. It's nearly impossible for dinosaurs of the 20th century to understand 21st century marketing.

[Domenick Cilea]

Well done. You provided the marketing team at GM with some excellent (and free) advice. But will they listen?

Given their current tumultuous situation, GM needs to STOP talking and START listening.

Engaging with their customers (many who are US taxpayers that technically now own 60 percent of the company) will allow them to garner market-driven insight to make better products.

As you know, when customers find value in a product/service, they tell their friends (which is the best form of advertising, marketing and PR).

[Nick Lucido]

Ive been following what's going on with GM since I've been born, actually. I'm from the Detroit area and I like to think I'm very familiar with the company. I like your ideas a lot, but to me, they do most of what you suggest above. They have a strong and very human presence online. They connect with customers and share the stories about what their company does.

Also, when you talk about making cars that people want, the marketing folks aren't the ones making the cars. Sure, they provide research, run focus groups, etc., but ultimately, it takes a long time to develop a new vehicle and this small vehicle revolution is relatively new. Big cars sold, so GM made big cars, and now they're paying for a lack of diversification.

Besides, what's going on with the auto industry doesn't have a lot to do with marketing. Every auto company is performing poorly.

[Antonio Montero]

Good post. I think that first and foremost, GM has to sit down and develop a vision of it's future. This vision must be inspiring, challenging, realistic, achievable and SHARED by all it's employees.

Judging from their new ads, it seems to me that they haven't really committed much time and thought to this because as you noted, the ads seem to be more of the same old, recycled stuff.

Notice that I stress the shared quality of the vision. All people working at GM must embrace this new vision and, ideally, they should be able to contribute their thoughts in shaping it in order to be able to commit to it. Visions formulated at the top by just a handful of people are doomed to fail because people at lower levels will not feel represented.

However, this is not simple task to undertake considering the massive size of GM. But it's a fundamental first step in any successful organizational change initiative. Hopefully there are tools now that can help people participate and make this task a little easier. Just look at Starbucks and their MyStarbucksIdea.com. If GM really cares, they should do something like this and invite their employees, customers and non customers to participate. They should give it a shot at least. Otherwise, the stakes of failing are extremely high. Or do they really think that things are going to magically change by following the same approach they have been using for years?

Reinventing implies not only marketing in a different way, but also rethinking the fundamental vision of what the company hopes to become.

[Rodney Johnson]

Reinvention is a huge undertaking - and that likely needs to be pursued. However from my side of the fence, I expecting that they will try to reinvigorate what they have. This allows more of the same, and prevents them from truly reinventing themselves.

May its just semantics, yet semantics appears to be what GM has been doing for years.

[David Meerman Scott]

Thank you all for such thoughtful comments. I really hope that people from GM are paying attention to what you all have to say. But so far, nobody from GM has commented...

[Ron Arden]

Great post. I went to www.gmreinvention.com and poked around. I went to the bottom of the page and clicked on the Twitter icon to go to their Twitter feed. Guess what comes up? A dialog box with legalese telling me that I am leaving a GM owned site and they are not responsible, blah, blah, blah. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. These people can't get out of their own way. So much for looking at things in a new way.

[Andrew Rodgers]

Great post. It really does look like the only way GM can make it now is to humanize the company, come down from the silver tower and listen to customers, internal customer (employees). Find out what type of car Americans want, create new cars that are future proof and desirable. Break the link between Madison Ave and C-gulls.

[ToddySM]

Hey David,

Great suggestions to GM but as you write above - no follow up from their side. And I totally agree with Siobhan - there are bunch of organizations spending millions of dollars on useless TV commercials. Idon't think any company should spend more than $2K for TV ad and they can learn from Doritos how to do it. The sad part is that companies like GM launch such old fashioned marketing campaigns that change nothing and the money comes at the expense of taxpayers (as in the case of bailed out copanies), shareholders or company employees.

My suggestion to GM is: don't do any TV commercials and newspaper ads; lower your traditional marketing footprint because this is quite big expense with little or nothing ROI; word of mouth (or mouse:)) is your best friend. Ooh, and learn from Tesla Motors - I have not seeing any TV ads from them but I've heard a lot and I am more familiar with their models than yours.

[Justin Ellett]

Great post David
All I can say is, I sold my stock a long time ago :)

[kay plantes]

Great post. Your customer image is not what you say, but how you actually behave.

In GM's history is the (now lost) national sentiment that "What's good for GM is good for the USA." Is there a way to return to that historic feeling of "we're all in this together?"

Reinvention is something we all have to do in this daunting downturn. Were I GM, I'd create community (point 5) around the need to, challenges of and opportunities for reinvention. Get engineers at GM personally connected to engineers in other companies in need to reinventing their offering gather ideas from those engineers about reinventing cars and engineering, sales people connected to other companies' sales people. GM then becomes a community focused on reinventing the US so as to improve lives for all of us.

My idea may sound lofty, but I think it will take emotional benefits to keep GM going while they work on the longer term reinvention of their offering to better meet customers needs.

[ilya]

David - great post.

But one thing I disagree with is your derision of the "ten year bumper to bumper warranty."

To me, that's not evidence of building a product that nobody wants to buy; I instead view it as a statement of confidence in their product. (BTW, my sense is that Detroit screwed up on quality in the 70's and 80's, paid dearly for it, but has arguably come back and even surpassed the Japanese on that particular measure.)

[@NWGuy]

Antonio has a great point, reinvention is change management and a shared vision. The employees have taken a lot of hits over the last 20 years; it will take a lot of effort to make them believe in this. It isn't TQM or other nice programs, it's adjusting to being a much smaller, nimbler company.

I'm not an expert but nobody here discussed the branding aspect of the reinvention. On Monday I tweeted with someone from GM and was pointed to their site to learn about the 4 brand strategy. The nameplates didn't really support reinvention, and I'm a lifelong GM car owner. Doesn't this confuse between product and corporate branding?

Why advertise everything as GM when you are trying to sell people Buicks and Chevys? How many P&G commercials do you see versus products?

And is Chevy the brand that will woo America to small green cars?

BTW, I truly hope for the best but it will take a major shift in thinking to be successful.

[carrie williams]

Great post and discussion. Beyond the financial pressures GM faced was the diminished value of the GM brand as something representative of anything more than big. Is there a GM truism of every product within its portfolio? Will GM, as a parent company, represent any one thing that we can all point to? I shudder when I hear Madison Avenue words like "reinvent." It's a dauntingly high platform to leap from. I would much rather see them reemerge building on a core value that once existed in a way that is relevant today. It's the thing that all great come-from-behind stories are made of.

[GM]

Dear Mr Scott

Thank you for your post and your advice. Unfortunately or Madison Avenue bank account (we deposit a lot of money there)thought it was in our best interest to spend more money on full page print ads and tv commercials. In order to do that we needed to cut back or a few staff, so we let go of our brand managers and monitors. I mean how often do people really blog about us anyway, and when they do can it really be useful?

Thank you for your concern, but if there is anything we learned from this last election talking about "change" is good, so that is our new strategy....to talk about it.

All the best
-GM

[Scott Jacob]

Thanks David - I found your post excellent, but I'm amazed you missed the iconic example of your last recommendation. For those of us old enough - when Chrysler took this road in the eighties, Lee Iacoca was all over their message - personalizing their struggle and acting like a leader of the troops.

I'm also afraid there isn't anyone in the top group of GM execs now days to fill his shoes. Maybe they can get President Obama to say a few words - talk about an iconic face to put on your brand!

[Scott Karambis]

Lots of solid points, but isn't it about time we put the whole out of date Madison Avenue cliche to rest? I'm not sure there are any more agencies on Madison Avenue, and even if you mean it as a metaphor for big NYC agencies, it's still wrong.

There are no big agencies in NYC or anywhere else who aren't doing good work in new media/non-traditional spaces. I don't work for one, but I know plenty of people at big agencies who are doing great, effective work. DDB and BBDO (2 very big nyc agencies)just won the most effies this year (based on advertising effectiveness). Check it out. http://www.effie.org/ This a tiresome red herring. And a distracting one at that.

Anyone who has ever presented to GM management know that the problem isn't some old-fashioned obsession with TV, but GM itself. GM has been too lazy, self-involved and risk-averse to do the marketing that any number of big or small agencies have recommended for years.

It's just as easy--and probably easier--to make expensive, unstrategic, pointless digital marketing as it is to make expensive pointless TV. Viral marketing in particular generally demands making the kind of provocative work which GM would never have the courage to do.

[Christopher Barger]

"A YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, twitter stream, ebook, Facebook fan page and the like."

YouTube video? Check. http://www.youtube.com/user/gmblogs

Facebook fan page? Check. http://www.facebook.com/generalmotors

Twitter stream? We've been on since January 2008. http://twitter.com/gmblogs

Series of photos? Been on Flickr since 2007. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gmblogs

With much respect, I'd offer that at least in the social realm, we are already doing much of what you're suggesting.

As for the idea that we're tone deaf because we haven't responded to your post, this week we've engaged in literally hundreds of conversations -- on Twitter, in Facebook, on our own blog, on outside blogs, in webchats... we're trying. If we haven't gotten to a single individual's post yet, it doesn't mean we're tone deaf or don't get it... it means we're HUMAN and can only do so much in a 24 hour period.

You've got some points I'd like to get back to at some point. But my human reaction right now is that Twitterstorming us to get our attention was a bit unfair. My team and I have tried to answer as many questions and listen to as many thoughts as we can in the past week. I am sorry that we haven't gotten to yours yet.

I'd ask you to concede that it is not possible for anyone to be everywhere at once and engaging in EVERY conversation happening anywhere on the web. If you will indulge me this very exhausted response during the busiest week in our history, I will personally spend an hour with you on the phone hearing you out and bouncing ideas back and forth. Could we talk Monday?

Christopher Barger, Director Social Media, GM