What's your motivation to buy GM.....Ever?

I am a GM owner. I bought a Chevy, partly because my Dzedo worked for them practically his whole life, and partly because I got a good deal.

Why would I ever buy a GM again? Why would anyone buy a GM?

They have one of the toughest tracks back to significance ahead of them. The people that buy their cars "bailed" them out 6 months ago, now they are bankrupt. Thats left a rather bitter taste in their mouth I'd say.

They probably have the worst vision of any car company ever, partly because they are locked in to certain things by their unions, and i'm guessing a huge part is poor management. Why have they not changed their course of action? Stop selling trucks, suvs, high gas-guzzling vehicles! Okay maybe not all of them, but start focusing on what people want now, anticipate the future. Smaller, economical, greener. Easy buzzwords and it doesn't take a genius to recognize that. So what does GM do? They flash around the Chevy Volt, an electric car that has style and looks groundbreaking. And they flash it some more, then a little more, and finally a little more. Where is the Volt???? Make it a priority to get that car on the road! Can you imagine the impact/goodwill you would get by being that first major car company to roll out an electric vehicle? Nope, they will just continue to tease and annoy their customers with it.

Everybody is getting frustrated by this GM saga and the ridiculous deal the unions have been able to manage over the years is completely absurd and coming to the forefront nowadays. Isn't it time the union members go to their leaders and say...."Uh, i'd like to keep my job why don't we roll back salaries to a reasonable level?" Never going to happen I realize.

Joseph Jaffe also made a similar post ranting about GM's timing of their new commercial (commerical can be viewed by clicking the link) and got some serious response from GMs guys pretty quickly, although the GM posters were taking it much much much to personally. Makes for good reading though. I think Christopher Barger (GMs director of Social Media) made the right decision in inviting Jaffe to join Fritz on Thursday, but at the same time he came off as an arrogant dick.

This is the kind of attitude that wanes a lot of my motivation to buy GM again, they think they are ENTITLED to us buying cars from them because they are a large employer and have been around for so long, whereas they should be working their asses off to prove to us why we should support such an obvious collasal failure. Maybe this is their starting point though.

Car Industry Creative Bailout part 2

Further evidence of my earlier post on the lack of creativity by auto companies and their creative agencies. It's like the pepsi taste challenge, can you tell the difference between these two brands?

Looking at these two ads you would think they were for the same company, only problem is one company is German the other is Japanese.

Pepsi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEg-0uE-6iM

Coca-Cola
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsJ6uLWPu78

I haven't looked into which agencies are behind the creative for each company, but the entire concept is the exact same. Rather embarassing for all the dough they dished out for them.

The automotive industry needs an advertising bailout

If you have seen one car commecial, you have seen them all. They all blend in to one soupy monotonous mash of person announcing that this "amazing car" gets you so many miles to the gallon, handles like a gem, and is as quiet as their empty showrooms. Well news to car companies, your not fooling anyone and you are all saying the exact same thing. So why would you continue to waste so much money on basically promoting the exact same car as your competition. Here's a crazy idea:

a) Design a car that is different from your competitors, get crazy with the look of a car
b) Have something in the car that differentiates you from every other car company out there and is actually of use to someone (just spitballing but apple is a pretty hip company maybe you can make an arrangement like Nike did with the ipod shoes)
c) Market the crap out of your unique offering (this is pretty much the first lesson in any marketing class)

It baffles me that car companies haven't been able to come up with something like this. As much as I don't really like Scion, at least they are thinking slightly outside the box and not trying to be everything to everyone. GM, Ford, and Chrysler seem to be mailing it in like a lot of the union workers that are on the line.

It also seems like none of these poor advertisements are available on YouTube which is definately a great way to help not drive traffic virally. Good thing they have now gotten to the point where they are appealing for national pride "Over half of these quality Pontiac products are made right here in Canada including......"

Well that did it, i'm sold. I'll buy a car for my country. And full disclosure, I own a GM product currently that I bought brand new 4 years ago and can say that it is not really the "quality" that a lot of these commercials tell me it is. My family has always owned GM so we are pretty loyal, but I can tell you this much, the loyalty ends after this car is done.