Yesterday I pointed out in the post “What Killed GM? Brand Marketing” that GM’s woes were the result of an unrelenting focus on brand marketing, rather than product quality. Needless to say, a number of branding gurus have lambasted this viewpoint, probably because it assaults their parasitic business model. Whatever.
To make my point, here’s the history of GM’s marketing triumphs and product woes, as illustrated by seven classic GM television commercials. They’re short, they’re entertaining, and they show how brand marketing tried to paper over GM’s problems, eventually leading to the near-death of the company.
UPDATE (4/6): I added the Saturn into the mix — probably the best example of egregiously stupid branding in the entire history of the automobile business.
PROBLEM #1: IRRELEVANT MESSAGING
This 1952 classic sets the tone for GM TV ads for the next fifty years — associate something emotional but irrelevant (like sex or a sexy female) with the product, and then promote the product with a memorable jingle, perhaps with a patriotic subtext. While hardly unusual for brand-oriented marketing, we’ll see how, in GM’s case, the technique becomes increasingly absurd as the company loses its bearings.
