Thursday, June 10, 2010

Is GM Doing The "New Coke"?

Remember when Coca Cola made the worst advertising and marketing mistake in modern history?  The "New Coke" debaucle took years to undo and cost not only shelf space but hurt the iconic brand.  Well, I have to wonder if the brain doner who came up with that idea hasn't moved to GM.

In a leaked email GM is requesting it's dealers and affiliates to stop using the household name "Chevy" and roll back time a half a century to call their flagship line of automobiles, Chevrolet.  Say what?

Maybe it's a PR trick to gain attention, but at a time when GM has finally got some cool new Chevys, one of which I bought (new Chevy Equinox), and are about to roll out their new Volt electric vehicle, changing the brand name seems like insanity.

Dealers and bloggers are amazed and downright annoyed by the advertising manifesto and I suspect if it's not a gimmick to get us talking about Chevy, then some agency creatives have been really using some "new coke".  Aw heck, they are doing that no matter what!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm a person for using old technology until its driven into the ground.

I prefer old GM over new GM (having driven a GM van for many years), and the same is said for Google.

Sounds like the current flap with Google and its new Background feature.

The problem is You can't satisfy all of the people all of the time problem.

There's a push to have 'Classic' Google returned to replace the 'New' Google.

Frankly, I prefer Google with a plain white background with as little bells and whistles as possible.

If you ever get a chance to look at how big the plain white Google background is, well, it's just unbelievable lately. Used to be only around 2kb in size. Intended for those people with modems instead of high-speed DSL.

Plain Jane Google is now 11kb plus one pic, Pacman Google is 15kb plus several pics, and iGoogle can be 100kb and up (my personalized iGoogle page is 580kb) plus lots and lots of pics.

Can we go back in time when size was really important? Bigger is not always better..., and newer is not always better either... ;)

richard h.
fort worth, texas, usa