GM Cannot Bail Itself Out of Growing Inertia

Word is starting to spread from various sources in the automotive industry from advertising and marketing executives, to competitors to dealers and consumer loyalists that GM might have blown its only chance for some semblance of reasonable survival.

We all knew that General Motors would never recover as the major player it once was. That was a given. We can see that the current battle between Toyota and Volkswagen will determine who will emerge as the top selling brand. Additionally, Ford is creating a dynamic future for itself. This is the current automotive climate. With Subaru, Kia and the like growing, GM’s future looks further tarnished. It is hard to believe that GM, under today’s conditions, will find any kind of acceptable niche to settle into among its competitors. It is a floating canoe with no paddle.

GM, after its major cash infusion via a public bailout, had a chance to clean house from the top down with the opportunity to start with a fresh slate and hire visionaries in the design, engineering, sales and marketing area’s of the company. Instead, most key positions at GM are still held by highly-paid company management lifers. Moving current employees, who failed at their positions and helped create this debacle, to other key roles will only spell more disaster.

I have the utmost respect for Bob Lutz, one of the automotive industry’s true greats. He has done some good in the marketing efforts he is currently spearheading, but his knowledge of how and who to reach out to in the new world of social media and electronics is greatly lacking and suppressing GM’s ability to distinguish its brand and sell new cars.

Instead of segmenting advertising to pinpoint target consumers, GM continues to act like it is 1960 by putting most of its resources into television. Hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds has gone to support adverting in the past 6 months and has fallen totally flat and produced no discernible gains in cars sold. GM lagged behind the competitions in Clunker August and continue to languish in poor sales numbers.

Other than the Chevrolet Volt and possibly the Cruze, the company has little in the pipeline that will stimulate any future excitement. This mess will take years to “mop up” under its current leadership. Cash infusions and time are just about up. Without the right key players in place to formulate an aggressive product rich future, GM will fail, and fail big time, taking all of us hard working taxpayers down with the ship.