Now that GM is 'out' of bankruptcy (whatever that means), it's still spending approximately $50 million per month to run its "Reinvention" spots. If the recent emergence took 9 months to accomplish, the branding campaign presumes to close the door on 100 years of history in 30 seconds.
Actually, the pivot comes less than 15 seconds into the piece, when the narrator has noted mistakes, errors, or some other coded references to having sucked up $50 billion-plus in taxpayer money (and then going bankrupt because of its employee-related costs). Then it's enough with history; the company is focused on the future, and is already fast at work creating a newer, smarter, less apology-prone business.
Added to the latest nonsense about a "green" logo (a conversation that doesn't happen without lots of pricey expert help), it's obvious that GM is a company lost in branding-land.
I can imagine the meetings at which it was decided that an apology was somehow necessary. I'm sure the qualitative research told them that we let consumers down was a sentiment that should resonate with people who've not bought a GM car lately; it's not that they chose other makes, but rather that the company failed to win them over, and for that, it needs to be sorry. Once it acknowledges this reality, its subsequent claims will be far more relevant and credible.
Only it isn't reality.
GM failed its employees, suppliers, dealers, and investors. It mismanaged their hard work, mishandled their relationships, mistakenly abused their initiative, and mistook their inertia for confidence. Any apology should have been directed at these audiences first, if not solely.
But for them, an apology wouldn't be enough, nor would the claims of the next phase of GM's branding campaign, which purportedly will start running now that it's out of bankruptcy; it's going to declare a "new" GM, and you can bet that it'll be chocked full of that faux populist rhetoric that only a truly inspired copywriter could scribble. New focus. New spirit. New new, with some more new added for newness.
It took 100 years to drive this great company into the ground, and we're supposed to believe that it only took 9 months to create an entirely new entity? That's not real, it's surreal. Worse, it smacks of being a lie.
The branding campaign is evidence that it's business as usual at GM, at least in the marketing department. No matter how it gets presented -- whether via glossy videos on TV, or lots of viral video and the other detritus of social media -- it tells us that the company either doesn't know, or doesn't care what it needs to do before it can claim to tell us anything believable:
- Tell us with specific examples how there's a new partnership with employees, after hammering the unions for zillions of givebacks
- Explain what has been done on the assembly-line floors to ensure that they build will be de facto superior to any other
- Describe the truly innovative ways that the dealer network has been strengthened, not just thinned
- Provide tangible examples of the supplier commitment from companies large and small across America
- Give investors a new understanding of what it means to own GM stock, and how the company will ensure more transparency and knowledge
If GM is doing these things right now, you wouldn't know it, would you? If it is, it could use these real actions as the basis for its repositioning to consumers.
A truly "new" GM would skip the slickly-produced apology ads, and avoid declaring anything (Chrysler did the "new" thing a few months before admitting it couldn't make a car worth selling any longer)...and instead address the reality of why car buyers should join in the adventure. Invite them to participate in the reinvention. Narrate the process, honestly an explicitly.
Don't produce an inspiring branding campaign; rather, invent a truly new approach to the what and then how of stakeholder engagement.
There's no "new" GM without a fundamentally new approach to its branding. And so far, we're just getting the same old nonsense.
