by Steve Adubato, PhD

There are many reasons why General Motors has gone bankrupt. Yet, one of the biggest involves their ineffective efforts at executing a smart, strategic and coordinated branding and communication plan.

Over the years GM manufactured and aggressively promoted a variety of cars that to many consumers seem duplicative and not especially distinctive. GM was all over the place with Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs.

When a company or an organization has too many products to sell and attempts to communicate the message that they are all things to all people, they wind up sending confusing and contradictory messages. Let’s be more specific regarding some of the branding and communication mistakes made by GM over the years:

--An effective and memorable brand has to stand for something. When it comes to a car, one of the most important things to communicate is that when people think of your name, they associate it with reliability, comfort, and an affordable price. In GM’s case, they should have realized years ago that sometimes when it comes to marketing, you must communicate less rather than more. They should have decided which three or four cars under the GM brand could be promoted in an effective and strategic fashion. Instead, they must have figured the more cars we have out there, the more options for people to buy. Yet, in the process, the GM brand became muddled and confusing. Compare this to BMW or Toyota. Fewer cars, but much more recognizable brands.

--No matter how great the temptation, organizations should never try to be all things to all people. That’s what GM’s communication strategy seemed to hinge on. We’ve got a car for everyone, no matter who you are or what your budget is. Again, this may sound great in theory, but will clearly not distinguish you from the competition.

--When the GM bankruptcy was announced, its CEO and other top executives seemed to say all the right things about “reinventing” the company. They actually produced a video called “reinvention” which is linked to the GM site. The problem was while the words were logical and seemed to make sense, when you watch the video, what is missing is a clear sense of PASSION. There just isn’t much emotion in this whole “reinvention” thing. If the audience doesn’t feel a deeper, more personal connection with the actual messenger himself, the communication plan falls short.

--I’m not convinced that the communication and marketing team at GM was ever really listening to their customers and prospective customers. How hard did they work to ask questions such as; “While GM currently has eight cars on the market, which two or three really stand out and why? Which cars don’t you like?” It would have been very easy for GM to have identified that its communication and branding plan was flawed if they had cared to know what the marketplace was thinking, feeling and saying. But in the communication game, if you never ask, you will never know. But if you DO ask, you must listen and ultimately respond.

For whatever reasons, GM never did that and are now in a huge financial hole trying to play catch up in an industry that finds itself with its back pressed against the wall. I’m not saying that even if GM had done all the right things from a communications perspective that its cars would be flying out of show rooms. Clearly the auto industry has many complex and difficult challenges and problems. However, GM’s poorly designed and haphazardly executed branding and communications plan only made a bad situation worse.