Saving GM with Better Branding

I think everyone knows these days that GM (General Motors) is in trouble. They have been asking for help for the last couple of months and now it seems like the US Government is ready to give them money to keep the company going.

To get that money they had to submit a restructuring plan to what they were going to do with the money and try to show how they would not get back into the same position again. Now of course site is not about business matters, but it is about making products, services and brands look and be their best. So if I was in charge of how to restructure GM brands and products, and I?m definitely not, here is how I would do it.

Okay, so right now GM has 8 brands of vehicles: Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn. Many of those brands share basically the same model that?s just been renamed and small styling changes to make them a little different. Only a one of them do anything really well or have connected the brand name with an idea that is Cadillac which connects with luxury.

So this is an effort to make the rest of those brands connect with something, and frankly a couple of them are going to have to go away or take smaller roles.

Couple things: 1) Overall a major goal is to stop the sharing of models between brands, if someone likes and wants to buy a model and it?s a GM product it shouldn?t matter what brand makes it because they all some from the same factory. 2) I?m sure someone isn?t going to like my ideas, but again I?m not in charge so it?s not like any of this would happen. 3) This is only for brands marketed in the US.

So let?s start working our way through the brands:

Buick ? This is brand should just go away. I can?t even begin to figure out who is Buick?s targeted market, it?s no one below the age of 50 and that was even when Tiger Woods endorsed the brand. This brand has no cars that make it stand out from the rest of the brands. The Buick website talks about luxury, but I really doubt anyone connects Buick to luxury.

Chevrolet – Instead of having a full line of cars and trucks, this brand drops everything but sports cars. Keeping the Corvette and the Camaro, and then moving the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice (same basic car) to the Chevy brand. Then develop one to two other sports models for the brand. With Chevy?s long racing background this should be a no brainier.

Cadillac ? Leave it the same, change nothing. This is maybe the strongest brand GM has going for it. The cars look different from all other models, so no reason to change a good thing.

GMC – This brand takes over all trucks and SUVs. Again the Escalade stays with Cadillac because we are not going to change anything. But all other brands trucks and SUVs become GMCs, yes no more Chevy trucks. But since there are a lot of ?twin? models between Chevy and GMC you keep the better model brand. If the Tahoe is deemed the more well known SUV brand then it simply becomes the GMC Tahoe.

Hummer ? Moves to GMC and becomes the GMC Hummer and really there is no need for this. Cut down production to just the H1 and H2 and turn Hummer back into a specialty brand.

Ponitac ? Takes over the mid-sized and sedans cars and cross-over SUV?s from all brands. Again keeping the better model brands.

Saturn ? This becomes the Economy brand. All cars like the Chevy Aero and Cobalt moves to Saturn.

Saab ? Leaves the US market, I would not say to shut down the brand. Just move it back to the European market with its roots in Sweden.

There you go. Of course one or more brands would need some rebranding to refocus it to each of the new specific markets. Then GM could save production cost by not having to make was it basically the same model for different brands and each brand could then have it?s own design team that would just develop new models.

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Source:http://www.erikakers.com/saving-gm-branding/

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