Why I will Never Buy a General Motors
Product Again
What does the GM brand mean to me?
My first car was a General Motors product –
a red 1966 Biscayne. The two next cars were also GM, a 1969 Pontiac and a 1974
Cutlass Oldsmobile.
A first car is like a first love – always
cherished and never forgotten. The Pontiac
But I’m not going back to General Motors.
Why? Because GM has infected me with an
unforgettable and disgusting image of their brand.
Branding is not what the advertising
department thinks they are saying. It’s about the customer experience. And the
customer experience is created by every person in your company that connects
with your customers and prospects. Every person!
How do you get every person in your company
to treat your customers better?
It’s not about paying people more. The
highly paid union workers for GM demonstrated that fallacy. They showed their
disdain for the company and the customer when disgruntled workers placed pop
bottles inside car doors or sabotaged production in other ways. Yes, that was
decades ago, but I haven’t forgotten. Those grossly overpaid thugs didn’t
understand that the customer was paying their wages and pension.
I experienced this disdain personally while
visiting a GM plant in Saginaw ,
Michigan
I felt proud to represent my company in
discussions with General Motors.
While exploring possibilities with a GM engineer,
I asked him to show me examples that GM was using. The GM engineer led me out
to the production line that was assembling engines. We approached a production line
worker. The engineer in his naiveté asked the union member for a sample of the
plastic trays they used to hold the fuel injection nozzles. The trays were
similar in size to a cookie tray. The parts on this line were finely machined
nozzles that would become a critical component in the fuel injection system of
GM engines.
The line worker looked at the engineer with
a sneer. Both the engineer and I assumed that the line worker would hand us an empty
plastic tray. Instead, the production line worker grabbed a tray full of finished
parts, dumped the parts on the concrete floor and handed the now empty tray to
the engineer. Those precision machined parts were now scrap.
The engineer glanced at me, shook his head
in exasperation, took the plastic tray and led me away - without saying a word.
He didn’t say anything about it to me. This suggests that this destructive
behavior was normal or not worth fighting. I followed in complete disbelief
having witnessed this overt sabotage.
That day I discovered that our client was
operating in a war zone between staff and management. Their customers (and
suppliers) were clearly subject to collateral damage from this internal
conflict.
Why would you buy a car from a company like
that? The people who produce the vehicles were sabotaging the products. The
myth about quality was busted. How would GM survive with this internal conflict?
Decades later GM was in the news when they begged for a government bailout.
I wondered:
Who was surprised by this financial
failure?Why did the government bail out this dysfunctional company?
I still love my first Chevy. I don’t plan
to buy another, ever.
Branding has very little to do with your marketing and advertising.
Branding is the experience that you create for your customers and prospects.
Create a strong enough brand and it sticks – sometimes to your regret.
Add your comments below
What good or bad expereiences have you had that BRANDED you?
George Torok Keynote Marketing Speaker Co-author of Secrets of Power Marketing Get your free copy of "50 Power Marketing Ideas" Power Marketing on FaceBook Marketing Zoo on Twitter
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