General Motors - Flying Cars

General Motors has a new ad out for its entire suite of cars, which is unusual since most GM ads are about a specific brand or a specific car.  For once GM has decided to make a statement about its products as a whole.  The message they are trying to convey is that GM cars are well-built and reliable, and GM is out to prove it with an extended warranty.  GM has finally recognized, 20 years after firms like Toyota and Honda made good, high quality, inexpensive cars available in the US, that drivers want reliability and dependability from their cars.

Who is the target for the ad? That's somewhat difficult to say, since GM has the problem of too many cars and too many brands.  Clearly the ad is targeted at people who want good, reliable transportation and felt they had to go to a Japanese, German or Korean manufacturer to get a car backed by a long warranty.  Since this is a GM ad rather than an ad for any of the specific brands or cars within those brands, it will remain to be seen if the relevance trickles down to the individual cars.

What's good about this ad?  The ad sets a great tone, showing thousands of cars in what appears to be a traffic jam, when suddenly some cars seem to float above the others.  What is it that makes these cars different?  At first it is hard to tell that they are GM cars, but eventually we get the point that the GM cars are rising above the other cars.  This allows GM to say, without saying, that the GM cars are better than the competition.  Actually, GM is just catching up to warranties offered by other manufacturers, but this ad demonstrates that they are starting to understand what the car buying public wants.

Also, I like the music in the background.  It gives the ad a bit of swagger and some edge to it that might not have been there otherwise.

My take: Will the car buying public understand that GM - General Motors - is offering extended warranties and is by extension saying that its cars are reliable?  Will that claim transfer to the brands and the individual cars themselves?  Note that GM is inferring its cars are more reliable and have higher quality - but no other car manufacturer is singled out as the comparison.  That's because GM still ranks relatively high in new car defects.  GM does not make an overt quality claim - it hopes that the warranty will demonstrate it stands behind its cars and that they are high quality.  This is an interesting gambit and one that GM needed to take years ago, but this ad positions GM well to recover some car buyers who may have only thought of imports for high quality transportation.

Comments

[blazing mom]

Who is the voice in this ad? It's driving me crazy!

[blazing mom]

I figured it out. Matt Dillon, yeah!