As GM reorganizes and survives on bailout money, they are faced with the marketing challenge of how best to support the brands that will be the future of the company.
One brand that is receiving relatively heavy marketing support right now is Cadillac. They're launching a new model, called the CTS Sport Wagon. It's basically a station wagon.
There are three things fundamentally wrong with this. All of these are symptomatic of why GM is in trouble in the first place.
1. Their timing is awful: Launching a new model NOW? Right in the teeth of all the negative publicity they are receiving related to going bankrupt? Tell me how this makes any sense.
2. The new model is a STATION WAGON! Station wagons haven't been popular since SUV's took over that market niche. After working pretty successfully for years to modernize the Cadillac image and make the brand younger, they decide to go retro with a station wagon? You've got to be kidding.
3. The splashy spending is no longer perceived as GM's marketing investment but as a wasteful use of taxpayer bailout money. Our tax dollars are being spent by GM to advertise an ill-advised new model being launched at the worst possible time. A really bad way to spend our money (it's not their money anymore.)
Cadillac should probably never have conceived and launched this model in the first place. I'll be amazed if it succeeds. Cadillac and all the other GM divisions should not be doing splashy big money marketing right now. They should be using PR tactics, not advertising, to set the stage for the relaunch of the entire company once the reorganization is complete. That's when they'll need to stun us with great new advertising that makes us truly believe that there is indeed a new smarter and better General Motors.
What they're doing now just looks like "same old same old." In fact, it strikes me as even stupider than some of the moves that got them to bankruptcy court in the first place.
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