Government Motors running commercial during The Finals

A story on NPR the other day was talking about GM's branding problem. They have strong market share in the middle of the country, but poor market share on the coasts. For the coasts, they were saying, they need to reposition themselves because they are seen as "an entry-level car," too low-class and low-brow, and generally not fru-fru enough for consumers there.

The problem they have now is an image problem, not a quality problem. You can do a lot of work on your image problem with advertising. So, I think spending money on tv spots (especially in a high-ratings broadcast featuring teams on the east and west coasts) is a great use of taxpayer-leveraged money. I'd much prefer they do that and fix their sales problem then continue to put more money into fixing a quality problem that was already fixed.

 

It's not black and white. You can't have one without the other.

You can't have success with a quality automobile without advertising. No one will buy it because they don't know it exists.

You can't have success with good advertising but a terrible automobile. People will buy it initially, but will eventually figure out the car sucks and word spreads. This is what GM ran into.

You need both a good automobile, and good advertising. Time will tell if GM figured out how to build a good car.

 

I thought it was a good ad with the transformers.

they still have to sell cars to get out of bankruptcy

 

Seems kind of lonely out there on this one, huh jopotmac?