FanaticZ
06-03-2003, 10:29 PM
shouldn't they save these ads until they start making some good cars?
GM ads take high road while admitting bumps
May 29, 2003
BY JEFFREY MCCRACKEN
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
General Motors Corp. will launch a nationwide ad campaign next week to admit something many consumers already knew: GM made some poor vehicles in the 1980s and 1990s.
Admitting its past blunders in a newspaper and magazine campaign is an unorthodox attempt by GM to attract the roughly 40 percent of auto buyers it says won't even consider GM products.
Ads will begin running next week in USA Today, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other national and regional publications. TV ads may follow.
In part, GM is trying to polish an image tarnished by low-quality cars such as the Chevrolet Chevette and Citation. Many GM cars of the 1980s and 1990s were notorious for oil leaks and premature paint flaking -- the kind of defects that can aggravate consumers. GM has received a boost in recent years due to gains in vehicle-quality studies.
The campaign, which GM calls "The Road to Redemption," will be about "5 percent mea culpa and 95 percent what's good about GM," said John Middlebrook, GM vice president of brand marketing, in a news conference Wednesday.
"We were looking for something jarring, and the most jarring thing was the hard truth," said Dave Moore, chief creative officer at McCann-Erickson Detroit, the local ad firm that created the campaign. "Saying that '20 years ago we had some really bad products, but we've learned our lesson' is a pretty unconventional thing to admit in an ad."
GM has narrowed the gap between it and Toyota Motor Corp. -- the company recognized as best in initial vehicle quality by J.D. Power and Associates -- by 58 percent in the past four years. The study measures quality problems in the first three months a vehicle is owned. In J.D. Power's 2003 study, released this month, GM again topped its domestic rivals, recording an average of 134 problems per 100 vehicles -- one more than the industry average. Toyota repeated as the automaker with the highest overall initial quality, with an average of 115 problems per 100 vehicles.
GM has, however, continued to lag further behind the industry in J.D. Power's long-term vehicle durability studies.
"That's a real advantage for Toyota and Honda, and you could argue is the most important thing when a person is deciding what to buy next," said Joe Ivers, partner at J.D. Power. "How the product does in year three, four or five is a big deal to the car buyer, and GM has had a harder time there."
A J.D. Power study showed in 2002 about 200,000 vehicle buyers left GM for Japanese-made vehicles, while only 75,000 switched to GM from its foreign counterparts.
Nonetheless, the GM ad campaign will try to attract buyers of rivals' cars and trucks by highlighting GM gains in initial quality studies, said Gary Cowger, GM president of North America.
"We may not have done everything right in the past, but we've learned from it," Cowger said. "It's a corporate-wide communication effort to close the gap between perception and reality."
He said two factors -- GM's past reputation for poor quality and family traditions of driving only an Asian or European vehicle -- keep four out of 10 new-vehicle buyers from even considering GM.
The text-heavy, two-page ad states: "Thirty years ago, GM quality was the best in the world. Twenty years ago it wasn't." Another part of the ad talks about "learning some humbling lessons from our competitors."
The ad campaign builds on recent GM efforts to attract consumers by allowing them to take GM vehicles home for an overnight test drive and by inviting owners of competing vehicles to events where they can test drive new cars and trucks.
"The road to redemption has no finish line," the ad says. "But it does have a corner. And it's fair to say we've turned it."
Companies don't typically admit their mistakes in their ads, a local marketing expert says.
"If you think back to Tylenol, they admitted problems with tampered bottles, but most are like Exxon, which never did an ad to admit mistakes so openly. This is unique by GM," said Aradhna Krishna, University of Michigan business marketing professor.
"They are kind of acting like a company in a crisis situation, and maybe their crisis is all the market share they and other U.S. automakers are losing to foreign automakers."
GM ads take high road while admitting bumps
May 29, 2003
BY JEFFREY MCCRACKEN
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
General Motors Corp. will launch a nationwide ad campaign next week to admit something many consumers already knew: GM made some poor vehicles in the 1980s and 1990s.
Admitting its past blunders in a newspaper and magazine campaign is an unorthodox attempt by GM to attract the roughly 40 percent of auto buyers it says won't even consider GM products.
Ads will begin running next week in USA Today, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other national and regional publications. TV ads may follow.
In part, GM is trying to polish an image tarnished by low-quality cars such as the Chevrolet Chevette and Citation. Many GM cars of the 1980s and 1990s were notorious for oil leaks and premature paint flaking -- the kind of defects that can aggravate consumers. GM has received a boost in recent years due to gains in vehicle-quality studies.
The campaign, which GM calls "The Road to Redemption," will be about "5 percent mea culpa and 95 percent what's good about GM," said John Middlebrook, GM vice president of brand marketing, in a news conference Wednesday.
"We were looking for something jarring, and the most jarring thing was the hard truth," said Dave Moore, chief creative officer at McCann-Erickson Detroit, the local ad firm that created the campaign. "Saying that '20 years ago we had some really bad products, but we've learned our lesson' is a pretty unconventional thing to admit in an ad."
GM has narrowed the gap between it and Toyota Motor Corp. -- the company recognized as best in initial vehicle quality by J.D. Power and Associates -- by 58 percent in the past four years. The study measures quality problems in the first three months a vehicle is owned. In J.D. Power's 2003 study, released this month, GM again topped its domestic rivals, recording an average of 134 problems per 100 vehicles -- one more than the industry average. Toyota repeated as the automaker with the highest overall initial quality, with an average of 115 problems per 100 vehicles.
GM has, however, continued to lag further behind the industry in J.D. Power's long-term vehicle durability studies.
"That's a real advantage for Toyota and Honda, and you could argue is the most important thing when a person is deciding what to buy next," said Joe Ivers, partner at J.D. Power. "How the product does in year three, four or five is a big deal to the car buyer, and GM has had a harder time there."
A J.D. Power study showed in 2002 about 200,000 vehicle buyers left GM for Japanese-made vehicles, while only 75,000 switched to GM from its foreign counterparts.
Nonetheless, the GM ad campaign will try to attract buyers of rivals' cars and trucks by highlighting GM gains in initial quality studies, said Gary Cowger, GM president of North America.
"We may not have done everything right in the past, but we've learned from it," Cowger said. "It's a corporate-wide communication effort to close the gap between perception and reality."
He said two factors -- GM's past reputation for poor quality and family traditions of driving only an Asian or European vehicle -- keep four out of 10 new-vehicle buyers from even considering GM.
The text-heavy, two-page ad states: "Thirty years ago, GM quality was the best in the world. Twenty years ago it wasn't." Another part of the ad talks about "learning some humbling lessons from our competitors."
The ad campaign builds on recent GM efforts to attract consumers by allowing them to take GM vehicles home for an overnight test drive and by inviting owners of competing vehicles to events where they can test drive new cars and trucks.
"The road to redemption has no finish line," the ad says. "But it does have a corner. And it's fair to say we've turned it."
Companies don't typically admit their mistakes in their ads, a local marketing expert says.
"If you think back to Tylenol, they admitted problems with tampered bottles, but most are like Exxon, which never did an ad to admit mistakes so openly. This is unique by GM," said Aradhna Krishna, University of Michigan business marketing professor.
"They are kind of acting like a company in a crisis situation, and maybe their crisis is all the market share they and other U.S. automakers are losing to foreign automakers."