|
Perhaps
no two periods have been more important for brand building
than the 1950s—when television came of age—and
the present time when nontraditional media appears in
the ascendancy. Traditionally, companies have taken
different approaches to brands: some such as HP and
Virgin focus on building a single corporate brand; others
such as Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi divide their efforts
between the parent company brand and individual products;
while still others emphasize their separate brands but
not the parent company, P&G and Unilever come to
mind. We're guessing many companies out there that have
seen recent and rapid decline in brand equity and share
are wondering, given the tectonic shifts taking place
in media, if now is the time to make a change to the
way they approach brands and leverage new communications
platforms to resuscitate corporate and/or sub-brands.
GM
is one such company that decided to change its model.
GM sells eight brands in the U.S.—in alphabetical
order, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Hummer, Pontiac,
Saab, and Saturn—and was the only major automaker
that did not market cars or trucks under its corporate
name. "Our studies show that consumers place a
tangible value on the General Motors name," explained
GM's top sales executive. A consultant with automotive
research house CSM Worldwide corroborated GM's findings:
"The GM corporate name has a stronger public image
than some of the brands that make up the company."
This isn't really saying much; as the author of The
Revenge of Brand X: How to Build Big Time Brand on the
Web or Anywhere Else Rob Frankel wrote in a piece
for Advertising Age, "Nobody knows why Buick
exists as a brand, but that's because it is a long time
since GM gave anyone a good reason." With many
of its sub-brands in trouble—"Buick and Pontiac
are both damaged brands that have suffered from years
of harvesting with very little reinvestment," GM's
vice chairman of global product development Bob Lutz
admitted at a recent meeting with investors—GM
announced its plans to change the way it had approached
brands since the inception of the company.
Unfortunately,
the way the company chose to transition its brand model
did little for either the corporate brand or its offspring.
GM announced it would stamp its corporate logo alongside
the name plate for the sub-brand. The company plans
to add the logo first to several new products including
the Buick LaCrosse and Pontiac G6, with plans to have
one on every model by 2006. GM also launched the "Only
GM" campaign including commercials talking about
its OnStar and Stabilitrack technology.
How
does adding the GM logo help define what the sub-brand
stands for to prospective buyers? We don't think we're
going out too far on a limb when we say while the GM
logo may be more recognized than a Buick logo it's just
as meaningless. "This is the sort of strategy that
makes sense when viewed from the inside," Eric
Noble, president of consulting firm The CarLab, told
USAToday recently. "Consumers operate in
a world where time is their scarcest resources. 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." Certainly it's
possible for people to remember twoGillette and Venus
razors, for instance—but that's when there's been
a dedicated effort to building both brands. And that
takes more than adding a logo.
Conceivably,
GM believed the "Only GM" campaign, which
plays up the company's dedication to safety and security,
would define the GM brand for consumers. But we're hard-pressed
to find any car company that doesn't talk about safety
and security—these are price of entry items not
distinctive points of differentiation. Not to mention
the fact that Volvo has a lock on the safety positioning
and has for years. Further more, when we did a little
more research on the OnStar technology, we found that
it's not exclusive to GM—Acura, Audi, Isuzu, and
VW also offer it, though not on as many models if you
want to split hairs—nor is it a standard feature
on all GM cars (not until 2007 at least).
Whether
the corporate brand is king, the parent and off-spring
share notoriety, or the company takes a back seat to
sub-brands, forget the basic tenet of branding—you
need to offer buyers a distinctive reason for the brand's
existence—it doesn't really matter what model you
follow.
Back
to top.
|
