GM STATEMENT: "We acknowledge we have disappointed; Violated your trust; Lost focus"

[tollytime]

Originally Posted by Perian

Words are nice, but no one really cares any longer.


10 Year Bumper To Bumper Warranties Are Nicer.

Would you buy either of the following?


2009 Chevrolet Malibu V6 LT2: Current Incentive: $ 5,000.
Warranty: Current

OR

2009 Chevrolet Malibu V6 LT2: Potential Incentive: $ 1,000.
Warranty: 10 Year, Bumper To Bumper


An enhanced warranty will return confidence to buyers and help dealers maintain service levels.

-Just a thought.

A ten year bumper to bumper warranty?? This forum is for people to express serious opinions. Please, if you really want to say something, make it an intelligent statement. A well built car shouldn't need such an extensive warranty. Could you imagine GM trying to settle claims on cars that are near ten years old that have been severely abused and negected? It's a car company, not Willy Wonkas's chocolate factory. I pound on GM pretty hard, but I keep it real. Consumers with your mentality will never be satisfied. GM has to focus on making suitable products that meet or exeed peoples realistic expectations.

[tollytime]

Originally Posted by elderon

I don't think an apology was exactly necessary but I like most of what this had to say.

As a GM customer, I have been waiting for this apology for a long time. I will continue to buy GM products because of this statement. I accept GM's apology and hopefully not be disapointed in my future purchases.

[vanshmack]

Offering "Mea culpa" has not been GM's problem. As mentioned above, they did this about a year ago. The problem, while the vehicles have improved, the culture behind poor decision-making has not. For every Malibu and CTS, we still get a not-good-enough G6 and a 2 year wait for badly-needed-now Cruze.

GM seems to have their production processes in order. It's the decisions behind WHAT is getting built that are the problem now.

[Xenon]

Sorry to rain on this parade but GM did a VERY similar campaign five years ago...

Dear Customer, G.M. Says, We've Improved
New York Times May 29, 2003
By DANNY HAKIM

DETROIT, May 28 - General Motors is ready to try the redemption card.

After lagging in quality rankings for years and long making cars that all looked alike, the company is preparing a provocative corporate image campaign that says it has turned over a new leaf and wants another chance.


Redemption chic, of course, is in full bloom, with everyone from the Dixie Chicks to wayward college coaches to Winona Ryder trying it on. Now comes G.M., the largest auto maker in the world, though one whose United States market share has been dwindling for decades.

"The longest road in the world," reads the text of the first ad from the campaign, "is the road to redemption."

The ad, which will make its debut in magazines next month, is intended to be the first in a series. The text appears over a darkly clouded sky. Below, a road twists off toward a burst of sunlight poking through clouds.

On the facing page there is more text, interspersed with a few pictures of some of G.M.'s more exotic vehicles.

"Thirty years ago, G.M. quality was the best in the world," the ad says. "Twenty years ago, it wasn't." The last decade has seen "our long journey back," with much time spent "breaking out of our own bureaucratic gridlock" while learning "some humbling lessons." As the company has been duly chastened, things have turned around, readers are told.

"With quality at the core of our values, we're building the best cars and trucks in our history."

Could this be a made-for-TV movie or what!

The ads are by the General Motors corporate agency, the Troy, Mich., office of McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, part of the McCann-Erickson World Group division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The campaign will tackle different topics, like G.M.'s gains in short- and long-term quality rankings and its engine and environmental performance. (The environmental ads will surely be read with interest by groups like the Sierra Club, which is planning a campaign of its own against G.M.'s Hummer brand.)

"The message is simple," said Gary Cowger, the president of G.M.'s North American operations and the primary architect of the strategy. "We may not have done everything right in the past, but we've learned from it."

"There still is an important group of consumers who have stopped listening to us," he added.

John Middlebrook, G.M.'s vice president for marketing and advertising, said, "We're dealing with close to half of the market that doesn't consider us, or put us in the reject pile." He described the campaign as "5 percent mea culpa, 95 percent what's good about G.M."

Mr. Cowger said he was inspired by General Electric's "We bring good things to life" campaigns. He said G.M.'s new effort would take a very different tack from normal "call to action" advertising. G.M.'s current campaign, for example, focuses on getting people into showrooms right away by enticing them with big discounts.

"This is more relaxed," Mr. Cowger said, adding that it was a way to reintroduce buyers to the company.


So will it work?

"I have serious doubts," said Peter DeLorenzo, a Detroit advertising veteran who consults for DaimlerChrysler. "On the one hand, it's commendable they're admitting that in the past they built poor-quality vehicles."

"But I don't think it'll fly," he said, because the campaign is undercut by G.M.'s huge push to offer discounts.

"Now they're turning around and saying, well, we made mistakes, but you need to look at our products because we're making them better," he said.

José Rosa, a former G.M. marketer who is now a professor at Case Western Reserve University, said, "It's an interesting play. Let's be up front and honest."

"They're saying they've seen the light," he added. "But what also has to be offered, you have to have cool cars. You have to have cars that when people go in, they say, yes, this reflects me."

Clive Chajet, founder of the Chajet Consultancy, a corporate identity specialist, was also skeptical. G.M., he said, "must have felt or known that the image of General Motors was dreadful in order to take such a step."

He also was doubtful about the focus on G.M. as a corporation, because it is not itself a brand (like Ford or G.E.) and has little resonance with consumers.

"If they wanted to leverage the General Motors corporate image for the benefit of the brands, they should say only the most positive statements about it instead of digging up negatives," he said.

G.M. has made considerable strides in improving manufacturing efficiencies and quality rankings. In J. D. Power's most recent initial quality survey, the company ranked below Toyota, Porsche, BMW and Honda but ahead of everyone else, including the Ford Motor Company, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan and Volkswagen. The company's Cadillac division even ranked as the second-best brand in the industry, behind Lexus - though its Hummer brand came in dead last.

For many noncustomers, though, G.M. cars and trucks still leave much to be desired. David De Wald, a 34-year-old health and wellness program manager at Electronic Arts in northern California, is a car enthusiast, but he sticks to European cars and even stopped buying Saabs when G.M. bought the company.

Why?

Because they just don't seem as imbued with quality, he said.

"A perfect example is the Escalade," he said. The Cadillac Escalade is a sport utility vehicle that has been popular with athletes and rappers. "It's selling well and basically on the merits of it as a status symbol. But I don't know how anyone could sit behind the wheel of an Escalade and then behind a BMW X5, or the Porsche Cayenne, or even the new Range Rover, and think the Escalade is worth $50,000."

Apparently GM hasn't done much since then.

[Rocket 88]

Originally Posted by tollytime

As a GM customer, I have been waiting for this apology for a long time. I will continue to buy GM products because of this statement. I accept GM's apology and hopefully not be disapointed in my future purchases.

At least it shows someone at GM is concerned with perceptions and I appreciate it also. Iacocca use to communicate with consumers in ads frequently and it is often a good thing to do.

That said, I am hopeful our Congress of morons does come thru with the money, and does get Rick Wagoner to step down. This isn't all his fault but he clearly lacks real leadership and vision on where General Motors should be and how to get there.

[2002 Caddy]

Originally Posted by tollytime

A ten year bumper to bumper warranty?? This forum is for people to express serious opinions. Please, if you really want to say something, make it an intelligent statement. A well built car shouldn't need such an extensive warranty. Could you imagine GM trying to settle claims on cars that are near ten years old that have been severely abused and negected? It's a car company, not Willy Wonkas's chocolate factory. I pound on GM pretty hard, but I keep it real. Consumers with your mentality will never be satisfied. GM has to focus on making suitable products that meet or exeed peoples realistic expectations.

Why bash this guy when GM HAS done EXACTLY this in the past... Not only was is a serious opinion BUT IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!

When they couldn't give away the 1987-1993 Cadillac Allante the slapped a 10 year bumper to bumper TRANSFERABLE warranty on the car... They were still fixing these cars FOR FREE until just 5 years ago...

IT COST GM A FREAKING FORTUNE and eventually killed the 1994 refresh of the car. Once you start with a warranty like this you are locked until you kill the model... offer it across the board and no-one will buy a new GM for the next ten years

[Beau]

Wrong. The CEO of Toyota apologized for their decline in quality almost 1 year ago.

See link below:

Yep and as I recall that thread was nothing more than, how HONORABLE the Japanese were for making such a statement, and how GM NEVER does anything like that.

Don't get me wrong, I am annoyed at this letter GM put out, but not because they are saying it, but because they are saying it over and over and over again.

However, in the past year or so guys, they actually WERE doing something about it, with labor contracts, and decent products.

[tomtheslacker]

Whatever....

[mgescuro]

Originally Posted by Perian

2009 Chevrolet Malibu V6 LT2: Potential Incentive: $ 1,000.
Warranty: 10 Year, Bumper To Bumper


An enhanced warranty will return confidence to buyers and help dealers maintain service levels.

-Just a thought.

Nope.

Because I cannot be guaranteed that GM would remain a going concern for 10 years.


As a shareholder of GM, I would not be confident that GM's quality is decent enough to sustain warranty expense over a 10 year period.

Originally Posted by xenon

And THAT is the typical attitude for Bay Area luxury customers.
But note that he also mentions that Escalade sells because of its image.

GM has a very long way to go.

[Beau Tie]

And they STILL haven't learned. They are wasting money by paying someone to come up with that corporate PR letter. They are wasting money by paying for that stupid ad. They are still pissing money away, and now the tax payer are paying for that ad.

Nope...they haven't learned. They will go down faster than Paris Hilton.

[Buickman]

another waste of money in an attempt to save their incompetent selves. even more reason to clean house as soon as possible.

[big swede]

Groveling shows a complete lack of confidence, I’m officially worried.

[Slideways]

Originally Posted by mgescuro

And THAT is the typical attitude for Bay Area luxury customers.
But note that he also mentions that Escalade sells because of its image.

GM has a very long way to go.

The guy stopped buying Saab when GM bought them, ha! Wasn't the Saab 9000 one of the LEAST reliable vehicles until GM took over?

[Orbit]

Originally Posted by Xenon

Sorry to rain on this parade but GM did a VERY similar campaign five years ago...

Dear Customer, G.M. Says, We've Improved
New York Times May 29, 2003
By DANNY HAKIM

DETROIT, May 28 - General Motors is ready to try the redemption card.

After lagging in quality rankings for years and long making cars that all looked alike, the company is preparing a provocative corporate image campaign that says it has turned over a new leaf and wants another chance...

Apparently GM hasn't done much since then.

Xenon, nice find from this 2003 campaign about GM's "redemption," which means nothing without clear acts, but GM's management has only made their situation much worse compared with 2003 (or even decades before then). After two such "apologies," GM has only two truly world-class cars, the Malibu and the CTS. BUT...serious quality issues still remain, even for newer products. Check out this long-term test of a Saturn Aura by Edmonds:

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...hotopanel..4.*

Besides other problems, the steering wheel trim kept falling off! Without a total management change, there is no hope that even scads of billions in "bridge loans" will turn GM into a success. That is, increasing your debt load will only further enable the failure of your company without bold and visionary management of the kind now totally absent at GM.

[Dukeboy01]

Originally Posted by eaton53

It'd be a lot more convincing if the responsible individuals submitted their resignations.

or committed seppuku on CNBC. Now that would be bad- @$$.

"I have brought dishonor upon the memory of William C. Durant, Alfred P. Sloan, and Bill Mitchell! AAAAIIYEEEEEE!"