GM May Need To Think About Killing Its Brand

General Motors’ sales and marketing chief Mark LaNeve said today that when the company asks consumers about the GM brand these days, the results come back pretty bad. But when they ask people about Chevy, Cadillac, Buick, GMC… the results come back fine. GM has been back and forth for 20 years about what to do with the GM brand. Perhaps they are close to deciding. Ditch it. Driving home from my job at Charlotte, NC marketing agency, birdsong gregory, I was listening to National Public Radio and heard a sponsorship ad from “GM… Maker of the Chevy Volt and hybrids...blah blah blah.” My thought? Money wasted. Why not focus all those advertising and marketing dollars on...Chevrolet. It’s GM’s most important brand.

The rumor now is that GM may go into a quickie bankruptcy in June, and be divided into two companies – a good GM made up of Chevy, Cadillac, Buick and GMC; and a bad GM made up of Hummer, Saab, Saturn and Pontiac that would be isolated and sold off or wound down.