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So, this was all about new markets where the Chevrolet brand is relatively unknown. In other words, the markets where consumers are just as likely to call their Chevrolet a “ChevWoo” or “Daewoo” as a “Chevy.” The reality is that nothing hurts the Chevrolet brand abroad more than the continued existence of the Daewoo brand… by comparison the use of a familiar nickname is a minor issue. And what is going to be easier for a non-English-speaker to say, Chevrolet or Chevy? Anyway, based on the harried, apologetic tone in this video, it’s pretty clear that GM would rather this controversy had never started. So why did the new ad boys feel like dropping “Chevy” was so important?
18 Comments on “Chevy versus Chevrolet: An (Official) Explanation...”
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“So why did the new ad boys feel like dropping “Chevy” was so important?”
Because they need to say something to cash their checks!
No matter how irrelevant or stupid may be, BTW they asked their US employees to stop using the Chevy name, not the foreign units…. go figure.
Saludos!
They should worry about the fact that Chevy doesn’t exist anymore, except in the Corvette and maybe the Suburban, much as I do’nt like this genre. The last Chevy was the Caprice, and there have been few real Chevies since the Chevette–which wasn’t a great Chevy, but at least it was a real one. Sheesh!
At least in Mexico, Chevy exists and there are many of them, actualy it is the 2nd most sold subcompact behind the Nissan Tsuru, but as you stated, it is not a REAL Chevy, it is no other than the Opel Corsa B restyled as Chevy C3, you can see a lot of Chevys as Taxis.
Best regards
If Don McLean had to drive a Chevy to the levee today, he’d have a hard time finding one!
Fun fact about Don McLean: his father was an MIT economist
Hasn’t GM been selling cars in Mexico and other Latin American countries under the “Chevy” name for a while now? I assumed the reason was to either target a younger market or, indeed, make it easier on the non-English speaker (or French as it were).
In the GM brass mentality, they still see Chevy as the car that’s up on blocks in some one’s yard, or the low rider bouncing down Whittier Blvd., a far cry from what they envisioned with Dinah Shore, and the USA. I firmly believe they all think it’s a 4 letter word, even though there are 5.
Oh, and by the way a Chevy was a much better car than the Chevrolet.
Oh good, I wasn’t sure if we could speak of this car any more.
http://www.tocmp.com/brochures/Chev/1962/ChevyII/images/1962_Chevy_II_04_jpg.jpg
The existence of Daewoo doesn’t hurt Chevy too much. Daewoo’s being branded and sold as Chevy’s hurt the brand a whole lot more.
You’ve not seen the upcoming Cruze?
It hasn’t even been a month, and the new GM marketing regime has shown itself to be rude (not firing Publicis in person), stupid, amateurish, uncoordinated, off-message and clueless — sometimes all at once. That “explanation” video only makes things worse!
OK, it’s much ado about what was only an internal memo. One could be generous and say Batey and Campbell were simply overzealous in trying to please their new boss, carry water for his favored agency and keep their jobs. At least be grateful these guys were shamed for their fuzzy-headed thinking before real money was committed.
Forbes’ Jerry Flint may have become an old fool, but I like his reaction to these dumb moves, by invoking Shakespeare: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
I think GM’s management is lacking in new ideas and the direction of the corporation. They’re feeling out of sorts and in a desperate attempt to gain back some semblance of control a manager made an off the cuff statement, that no one had the guts to refute, until the negative feedback started to come in. Now they are scrambling to contain the fire, which is how they have been operating for a decade. Pissing on fires instead of coming up with new products or ideas. It is further proof that the corporation is failing big time. Ford with their new product line of attractive vehicles is drinking GM’s milkshake. GM has warmed over ‘80s designs, trucks and vaporware.
Why couldn’t they have done this silently? In their ads, they could have said, “Chevrolet” instead of “Chevy” and I wouldn’t have noticed. Now they have caused a lot of upheaval and talk about them wasting their money. And to top it off, they say that we should keep calling their cars Chevies.
No one knows exactly what happened, but I suspect LennyZ hit the nail precisely on the head. Which is both sad and scary.
At it’s heart, this whole dust-up is over how to best manage a global brand: http://wp.me/pGyRI-fb
McNaughton Automotive Perspectives
http://autoperspectives.com
Whats next,
Don’t call it a Vette?
and Since the new Camaro is made in Canada the high end version will only be known as a Zed Twenty-Eight?
Someone needs to be fired. (that is right after they buy a tripod!)
Who cares what the name of the company is the Cruze will still be an over-priced pile of garbage.
Dude, get a tripod!
Well, they’ve been in Brazil for over 80 years. And their most succesful products were always Opels. People call them GM as often as Chevy or Chevrolet. I think they actuall had a model called the Chevy II (bowing to popular pressure who called the product Chevy and not whatever the boss wanted it called). They should do like VW, which after decades of worthless resistence, actually started calling their car the Fusaca and not VW sedan (nobody knows that name and if you say that’s the official name as many think it doesn’t even lokk like a sedan).