Walking Through GM’s New Commercial

Take a walk with me. We’ll stroll along with Ed Whitacre, the chairman of General Motors, as he walks through the latest GM commercial which is filmed either at GM’s corporate offices or on an old set from Grey’s Anatomy.

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Sleep aid
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From the outset of the commercial, the mood is best described as antiseptic. It’s like you’re walking through a hospital with an OSHA inspector.

Between Ed’s black suit and the lack of inflection in his voice, everything about the commercial seems designed to convey a lack of excitement.

Not counting Ed’s red power tie, you could do a shot of tequila every time you spot a color in the commercial that’s not black, white or gray and you’d still be able to hop into a Chevy and drive home sober at the end of the ad.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with featuring your CEO in an ad if, as was the case with Lee Iaccoca at Chrysler, your CEO has a sales background. Boring details spouted by boring engineers don’t sell cars, unless you already wear a pocket protector with your short-sleeve shirt.

But if that’s the case, you’ve probably already made your decision to buy a Japanese car based on the superior technology.

The rest of the commercial is a series of assertions made by someone who is obviously not an impartial observer. No self-respecting engineer would accept an assertion like “car for car, when compared to the competition, we win.”

Really? Based on what criteria?

The problem with this kind of declaration is that you’re telling us, not showing us.

“The [insert product here] is the best” doesn’t resonate as a claim unless it’s made by an independent rating service or backed up with some powerful evidence.

As chairman of GM, I certainly hope you think your cars are better than your competitors, but the fact you do carries very little weight with me as a consumer.

In fact, Ed does a pretty good job throughout the commercial in undercutting the notion of GM’s alleged superiority through his own words.

Mr. Whitacre starts the commercial by saying before he got to GM he had some doubts but now, “I like what I found.”

Is that because they just made you chairman … or is there another reason? We never find out.

Are we to assume all the doubts Ed had (by the way, “just like you”) have been magically taken care of in the few short months he’s been there?

There are two other instances where the “we’re the best” message gets muddled. Both could be chalked up to semantics, but words and phrasing are the scalpels of advertising — to not use them precisely is to botch the surgery.

Instance #1: “I just know if you get into one of our cars, you’re going to like what you see.” Every car salesman in the GM force should have flinched on this one. It’s Sales 101 — assume the close. It’s not if you get into one of our cars, it’s when you get into one of our cars. You’ve just finished telling me how great your cars are compared to everyone else. Why would there be any doubt as to whether I would be willing to see for myself?

Instance #2: “Put us up against anyone, and may the best car win.” Again with the doubt. Only this time it’s even worse because it’s enshrined as the tagline at the end of the commercial. There are so many better ways to say the same thing. “We challenge anyone to beat our guarantee” or even “Bring it on!” both exude more confidence than sounding like a beauty pageant contestant, “Oooh. All the other girls are so pretty and talented, I’m just glad to have been selected to be considered for the title…” blah..blah..blah. Can we get a question from Perez Hilton to liven this thing up a little bit?

Perhaps the most egregious fault of the commercial is the total lack of focus on the one thing which makes GM unique — the 60-day money back guarantee. That’s a reason for me to consider buying, or at least trying, a GM car but we don’t even hear about it until the commercial’s halfway over.

Even then, it’s just another bland sentence in Ed’s monologue. If you haven’t already fallen asleep or changed the channel, you just might get to hear an offhand reference to what should have been the focal point of the commercial.

A 60-day money back guarantee?! You can’t get that with a Snuggie, let alone a car. You need to grab my interest at the beginning of the commercial with that kind of guarantee and pimp-slap me with it for the next 45-seconds.

I may still buy a Honda, but at least you will have gotten my attention.

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“I’m telling you, Bob. If you boil vegetables long enough, they’ll look gray and washed out just like everything else here at this company…”

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Image: Zuma Press

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Two other excellent articles on GM’s horrific commercial are over at AdScam and The Truth About Cars.

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