General Motors' marketing missteps over Miami
Writer Lee Hawkins,
Jr. at the Wall Street Journal has written an in-depth examination on a common General Motors complaint:
its apparent lack of attention to the East and West Coasts markets.Using the South Florida market as an example, Hawkins writes how a series of misses and mismanagement has led to the automaker’s current marketshare of 13.8-percent in the area. Example: Cadillac ads depicting cars cavorting in snow while the weather in Florida climbed past seventy degrees. Using Led Zepplin music. Or apparently not realizing that the word “Breakthrough” has no direct translation in Spanish, with regard to marketing to the burgeoning Cuban-Hispanic market. Or the difference between Cubans and Mexicans (the latter make up only 4-percent of the Hispanic population), with a Saturn ad featuring the Alamo.
(Continued after the jump)
GM has enjoyed some successes in the Floridian market with the Hummer and Solstice. But as niche
vehicles, they generally don't bring as much money in when compared to volume sellers like Honda's Accord, one of
the most popular vehicles in the state.
Other issues, such as GM’s bewildering ‘Matrix’
bureaucracy and historical ignorance of dealership pleas, are also discussed. But apparently there has been change: in
2005, GM’s share in South Florida rose by a credible 8.4-percent. And GM dealers currently feel they have
better contact with the company itself.
"The whole organization is flatter than it used to be,"
said Doug Stevens, a sales manager in GM's Southeast region. "When I started out, there was no chance that I would
have talked to the CEO or the vice president of sales and marketing."
[Source: The Wall Street Journal via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gunnar Heinrich 3:43PM (3/09/2006)
It just goes to show that a Federalist system is needed in these United States when it comes to marketing.
http://automobilesdeluxe.blogspot.com/2006/03/fortune-takes-shot-at-gm.html
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Jon 3:55PM (3/09/2006)
Well those ads are better than the horrible "ride it like a ford" ads Ford does.
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Paul 4:07PM (3/09/2006)
and who says they are not stupid over there at gm. then why would anyone expect them to get the cars right.
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radioflier 4:07PM (3/09/2006)
I always thought Led Zepplin music was inappropriate for a Caddy commercial. For a Corvette or a Mustang comercial it would be OK, but not a Caddy - just not elegant enough!
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Puff Chippy 4:34PM (3/09/2006)
GM knows the midwest and that's their #1 problem. One time I was talking to a GM exec about cars and I explained how I didn't want a car with front wheel drive. He looked at me amazed and asked me why anyone WOULDN'T want a car with front wheel drive since they worked so well in the snow. The problem was I lived in Texas so I couldn't care less about driving in the snow. A move out of Detroit to somewhere down south that is growing and thriving and more in touch with modern Amnerica would be a great way to help turn GM around.
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Anthony Omuse 5:30PM (3/09/2006)
Boycott the Cadillac CTS
Yes! Now that I have your attention, lets help General Motors wake up and get its act right.
Being a Cadillac enthusiast I am disillusioned as to why GM would build and market the Cadillac CTS to compete against the likes of the Mercedes C class, BMW 3 series, Audi A4, Volvo S60, Infiniti G35 etc and yet not offer a feature that can be found in ALL these competing brands: an all wheel drive option. Yikes! GM are you serious about designing cars with consumers in mind? Well, hopefully youll get the message loud and clear when consumers keep trading in their CTSs for the competition leaving the CTS to have a natural death.
Long live the CTSlong live the consumer.
Anthony Omuse
Founder & CEO
SmarterCarDeals.com
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UH2L 5:49PM (3/09/2006)
Trust me. As a former GM employee, (#3, we're not all stupid), there are plenty of bright "with it" employees who get marketing, are in touch with the pulse of the whole nation including ethnic groups. There are many young people who work for the company who are from outside the midwest or are from the midwest and travel extensively. The problem is, there is no room for the youth to move into leadership positions and our new ideas were not taken as seriously as they should have been. Older people in leadership don't retire, headcounts get reduced, budgets get cut. That's why I took a buyout package.
As a car guy, I think I could have done a better job leading the corporate product portfolio. I even said it back in 2001 that we were focussing too much of our portfolio on trucks and crossovers. I advocated bringing Opels over here earlier (including smaller engines like the 1.8 L). Now they're going to rebadge Opels as Saturns. I also said they should bring diesels here, and was disappointed when one full hybrid project was postponed. That being said, some things can't be done as easily as the outside public thinks they can. There are all kinds of constraints with plant capacity, federalization. It's easy to be a critic, hard to be a practitioner.
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naif 7:39PM (3/09/2006)
Well folks, the downfall of GM-Ford must be near as news of the dis-association of the middle lands and and the east and west coast has again made the news. Just for the record, this was brought to light 30 years ago. See how dark that tunnel is? Also #7 above is right.
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the chad 9:35PM (3/09/2006)
Sigh...Its sad, really
I wonder if GM has ever realized that unless they are trying to sell cars to the corn fields, they MUST take a look at whats happening on the coasts, where the PEOPLE actually are. I've been to the midwest, its GM (and Ford) EVERYWHERE, they've got that market down, now focus on the remaining 70% of the country. I do wish they would really step things up a bit and focus their brands, specifically on the coasts. No one wants a badge-engineered car with poor quality.
#7, you should apply for Rick Wagoner's position
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Oh boo hoo 1:03AM (3/10/2006)
I used to live in the Midwest. Guess what, the ads don't fit there either. You think we didn't see ads of cars cavorting down mountainous backroads?
And a complaint about hair splitting between Cubans and Mexicans? Big deal. They're all Americans now. It's just pandering to treat them differently at all anyway.
Out here in San Jose, we have lots of different immigrant groups. We have Chinese, (some) Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Mexicans, Indian, etc. Do we have ads that split the line between Chinese and Vietnamese? You'd think a savvy and well-liked company like Toyota must do that right? Nope, everyone gets to watch ads featuring lily-white, Mormon Steve Young. We get far more ads featuring black people who make up a tiny percentage of the minorities here than the more prevalent Chinese, Vietnamese or Indians.
Just more stupid whining. You want to find more reasons not to buy a GM car? There are plenty. There's no reason to invent stupid ones.
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Richard Warren 11:20AM (3/10/2006)
A large part of the problem is that GM centralized marketing.
The ole home office should have concentrated on the overall GM identity, very similar to the aid that ran during the olimpics, linking the past to the present, showing all the lines and setting a tone.
#7 Some really good points there, any company/corporation needs a balance of old and new ideas, not just old and not just new.
Car guys should run car companies, that does not mean they can just be car guys getting their jollies off, there is a balance that needs to be reached with the bean counter/basic business side.
What GM needs right now is a Sloan. Go back and look at the tenents he set out how, while under an umbrella, the divisions remained quite apart from each other, how fiscal constraint and a great design department somehow worked side by side to produce unique products.
The regional offices should have been responsible for regional advertising working within a budget set out by the ole home office and building on the central theme of the corporate ads.
The dealer association can and does reach it's own area with what fits.
Each dealer then in turn tailors it's ads combining some of all the elements and customizing to it's own unique say 10 to 20 mile square retail area.
What GM does not need right now is Rick Wagoner, or another Roger Smith.
Waht a lot of folks don't get is this. GM could turn itself around faster than anyone thinks, but the will has to be there to do it. Some changes at the top with the right folks, and the right pay plans, that reward for what's done correctly, not just for showing up.
And for all the negative camp, keep in mind that GM STILL through all this builds and yes actually sells and customers actually buy more than any other make.
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Richard Warren 11:26AM (3/10/2006)
I apologize for the poor typing skills, gee.
#10 where abouts in San Jose? Lived in the Bay Area for years, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Milpitas.
You went west I went east now I live in the Midwest
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