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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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Quote:
GM to put corporate badge on its vehicles
By Sharon Silke Carty, USA TODAY
DETROIT — George Fowler is ready to get out his heat gun and start making some adjustments.
GM will be placing these chrome badges on some of their 2006 models.
Fowler, who owns a Pontiac, Buick and GMC dealership in Dearborn, Mich., is sick of all the shiny metal badges attached to the cars he's selling. So he wasn't thrilled to hear Tuesday that General Motors (GM), which makes those three brands, plans to add two more chrome logos to the side of new cars.
The new badges are simple boxes advertising that the car is made by GM. The carmaker is attempting to make consumers aware of all the brands it manufactures and will put the badges on some new cars starting this month.
"It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of in my life," Fowler says. "These cars have enough badging on them now. People want clean-looking vehicles. They don't want cars that are badged up."
GM says people want to know who makes their cars. GM sells eight brands in the USA: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Saab.
"Research tells us that many of our most outstanding segment-leading vehicles are not associated by the customer to be part of the GM portfolio," Mark LaNeve, GM's North American vice president of sales, service and marketing, said in a statement.
GM has been struggling to figure out how to encourage buyers to purchase its vehicles without big rebates. The carmaker has heavily relied on large cash rebates since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The strategy has lost its effectiveness over the past year, and GM's sales are down 1.3% this year.
The company said its research shows a growing desire among consumers to know more about the companies behind their favorite products. Its recent "Only GM" commercials highlight its OnStar technology, which connects drivers to a live operator when air bags are deployed or when someone pushes a button inside the car.
The announcement runs counter to what GM has said its marketing plans are. The company has said it plans to do a better job differentiating its brand lines.
Eric Noble, president of consulting firm The CarLab, says consumers have a hard time juggling two brand names for one product.
The GM badges are "the sort of strategy that makes sense when viewed from the inside," Noble says. "Consumers operate in a world where time is their scarcest resource. You're lucky if they can remember one of your brands. To hope or plan for them to remember two is unrealistic and, therefore, a bad use of resources."
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Badges badges everywhere... the make of the car, the model of the car, the special edition of the car, the dealership... how many more badges need to be put on there?
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