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Listening now…
30 seconds in, “our version of the truth…”
Oh, please… And if he says “perception gap,” I swear, I’m going to scream.
Lutz is absolutely right. There is so much animus towards GM right now that people are just throwing crap out there right now. There are people doing it on this blog.
Examples I’ve found here recently:
*The Cobalt is based on the Cavalier platform.”
(reality: it was on an all new platform)
*GM has to put rebates on cars to sell them.
(reality: so does Toyota)
*The Aveo is the world’s worst car.
(OK, I’ll go along with this one, but nobody will confuse any of its competitors, aside from the Honda Fit, of being decent)
I’m not saying we need to be cheerleaders for this company, but if we want to get our tax money back, trashing it makes no sense.
There is so much animus towards GM right now that people are just throwing crap out there right now.
Yes. And it’s his job to change that perception. The problem is that he and his predecessors suck at doing just that.
Marketing is all about establishing a relationship with your customer base and giving them a reason to consider your product. One of the ways not to do this is to repeatedly insult their intelligence with phony claims and then subsequently call their intelligence into question again by insisting they’re wrong in their perceptions. What you do, instead, is develop something that makes you distinct, that separates you from your competition.
That GM is still doing the former but not the latter is evidence of just how broken their marketing really is.
My wife and I really enjoy the ad on TV right now, where the president of GM stalks around the offices and basically tells people they’re stupid for not buying one of his vee-hickles. We Win! Simple as that! If by selling a car GM ‘wins”, then who loses?
*GM has to put rebates on cars to sell them.
(reality: so does Toyota)
GM’s incentives are about twice as much as Toyota’s; about $4K to about $2K.
He is right that GM is bombarded. Much of the barbs are nasty and unfounded. But that’s life I guess. It will take a good consistent run to stem the tide.
“There is so much animus towards GM right now that people are just throwing crap out there right now. “
No need to throw crap when there is plenty of crappy truth!
GM, a private business, is being propped up by MY tax dollars, while people like Lutz, who got them into trouble in the first place, are being richly rewarded. I already voted with my PURCHASING dollars, which is how capitalism and freedom are supposed to work, yet GM steals (and squanders) from me anyway.
GM should have died without a bailout. Idiots like this mismanaged them right into the ground, yet the taxpayer is expected to serve as the big trampoline for them to bounce off of and escape death.
This isn’t about cars. This isn’t about marketing. This isn’t about brands, engineering, unions, or bean counting. This is about values and responsibility, and the distinct lack of both in Detroit.
GM has had 40 years to win back customers… what makes them think they can now erase that legacy with mere words?
–chuck
@ FreedMike’s “There is so much animus towards GM right now that people are just throwing crap out there…”
True, but maybe there’s so much animus towards GM because we observers have yet to see enough enema from GM.
Me? I won’t believe any of Lutz’s blabber about the future until I see GM launch a Chevy station wagon (Cadillac don’t count). No, not a rebadged Daewoo or a dorky crossover — a real, American, mass-market station wagon for the practical and square-jawed. That will be the end of my perception gap. That will be the moment I see GM as brave.
Happy_Endings :
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
*GM has to put rebates on cars to sell them.
(reality: so does Toyota)
Depends on the car…just like Toyota. The Toyota Camry has a rebate right now. Does that make it somehow less desirable? Well, considering that it’s the best-selling car in the country right now, I’d say consumers have answered that question in the negative.
Rebates are how all companies – not just GM – do business right now. But we single out GM for doing it. Why?
We all know the answer: resentment of GM.
And GM worked hard for 40 years to absolutely deserve the “resentment” as the GM Deathwatch series so brilliantly pointed out.
If you want to really find out “why” GM is singled out, Freedmike, just a read a little.
This is The Truth About Cars, not GM Inside News, nor is it any other GM fan boi site.
Chuck Goolsbee :
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
GM should have died without a bailout. Idiots like this mismanaged them right into the ground, yet the taxpayer is expected to serve as the big trampoline for them to bounce off of and escape death.
And what would the fallout have been if GM had done what you wanted to and committed suicide?
It’s easy to make an ideological stand based on anger, but what about the hundreds of thousands of people at every level of the auto business who’d have been thrown out of a job, in the middle of the worst recession since the 1930’s?
I understand the anger too…but letting hundreds of thousands of people suffer because we’re pissed at a few executives is the wrong thing to do…and because it’d have stuck a knife in the side of the economy, it’d have been the foolish thing to do as well.
Wow. Lutz telling other people how to communicate is like a fish telling a flock of birds how to fly. Check out how he “promotes” the Volt on the Colbert Report. Great strategy there, genius — act like your car is slow and sell its “greenness” while denying global warming and making fun of the appearance of environmentalists.
I can just imagine how he’d sell a Hummer: would he call it poorly built, a rollover hazard, and make fun of Hummer buyers as poorly endowed men trying to compensate for something?
The Peter Principle is definitely at work here. Lutz has been promoted to the highest level of his incompetence.
He would probably be a worthy person to lead the GM truck portfolio. If it involves brute force and horsepower, he’s not a bad guy for the job.
But that’s it. He needs to be kept the hell away from passenger cars, and he surely has no business whatsoever serving in a marketing position. His whining doesn’t help, nor does his penchant for putting his foot in his mouth. You can argue about whether he should be seen, but he definitely shouldn’t be heard.
*GM has to put rebates on cars to sell them.
(reality: so does Toyota)
Many times, I’ve posted links that showed that there was no comparison whatsoever in the level of incentives, including when you made this same claim a few days ago.
In reality, the level of incentives aren’t even close to being similar to each other. And with much lower incentives, Toyota manages to sell comparable cars in higher sales volumes. I’d call it an apples-to-oranges comparison, except that would be insulting to fruit.
Rebates are how all companies – not just GM – do business right now. But we single out GM for doing it. Why?
We all know the answer: resentment of GM.
GM loses money on every vehicle they sell, on average. The only hope they have of paying back the money the US Gov’t lent them is if they start selling their vehicles at a profit. Continuing to sell vehicles at bigger and bigger losses, through the use of excessive incentives, will only hasten their destruction. So talking about GM’s reliance on using incentives, and the difference to some of it’s competitors in this regard, to sell their vehicles is a very appropriate talking point.
FreedMike, I didn’t know the Cobalt was built on a new platform, not the one used by the Cavalier. The Cobalt gets little praise, at least from the writers I’ve read. Does the new platform suffer from much the same deficiencies? Did the engineering, new dies, etc., consume a lot of money yet achieve little?
If all of GM’s failings is due to public misconceptions, prejudice, and bias, as GM wants you to believe, I have one question:
Why wasn’t anyone at GM all those years intelligent enough to PREVENT that from happening?
Smugness and arrogance, that’s why.
You sow what you reap.
FreedMike:
“but letting hundreds of thousands of people suffer because we’re pissed at a few executives is the wrong thing to do…and because it’d have stuck a knife in the side of the economy, it’d have been the foolish thing to do as well.”
So we prop up a private enterprise with public money? We pour billions into GM and we’ll NEVER see a dime returned. Mark my words.
As for the “thousands who would suffer” I posit that the very industry is suffering worse due to this life support being given to Detroit. Had GM died its natural death other automakers would have filled the gap left behind. A GM propped up with Federal cash acts as a huge barrier to entry for any potential competition. Had GM died, I imagine many smaller, leaner, and potentially amazing automotive startups could have sprung from the ashes, but so long as the zombie stumbles that can and will never happen. America is too large a market to not support a domestic industry but the continued presence of GM and the UAW prevent any industrial renaissance from happening. Instead we’ll get more of the same… which is, and has been crap for the past 40 years.
–chuck