General Motors Co. Global Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick, never one to think small, has declared his intention to transform the clunky Detroit automaker into a company on par with the brand that Jobs built: innovative, sleek, cutting edge and high design. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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“We have an aspirational goal and this is a big target for us,” Ewanick said this week at GM’s second annual Global Business Conference, a half-day of speeches from the Detroit automaker’s key executives, aimed at an audience of investors and analysts.
Ewanick, almost in the same breath, praised and then dissed his competitors when speaking about his goal to become more Apple-like.
“We understand our direct competitors are Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai — a very, a very strong competitor, one that I know well and is going to be very formidable — and Ford, obviously,” said Ewanick, who was the former CMO at Hyundai before accepting the GM job in the spring of 2010.
“But it’s time to clearly differentiate our brand and align closer to a true global brand like an Apple. It’s time for an automotive company to step out and address consumers and their needs in a way that’s never been done before.”
Just how GM plans to turn itself into Apple remains somewhat vague at this point, and there is some skepticism among automotive experts.
“I think it’s a noble goal but the short answer is no, it’s not doable in the climate we exist in,” said industry marketing expert Peter DeLorenzo, who runs the influential website autoextremist.com. “Automobiles just don’t have the broad appeal that the latest tech products do.”
As Ewanick spoke at the conference, a slide on the screen appeared with the iconic Chevrolet symbol displayed next to the Apple company logo.
“We have what we consider to be a somewhat different way of looking at this,” he said. “While our competitors are going after global leadership and global domination, they’re all talking about sales in one way or another and market share. [GM CEO Dan Akerson] doesn’t want us to chase market share, he wants us to chase profitability.
“To do so we want to build the strongest consumer brand, not necessarily the strongest auto brand. …We have to find ways to differentiate ourselves so we’re not competing on the commodities (such as safety or fuel economy), but find other ways to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.”
“Brands have to be clear, powerful and distinct in the marketplace,” Akerson said. “As hard as it was to go through bankruptcy, and perverse as this may sound, we had eight brands in the marketplace and we went to four. We cleared a lot of confusion and gave broader swim lanes to our (current) brands so we could make a distinction between brands and build equity and attributes.”
Automotive marketing and social-media expert Kathi Kruse called GM’s goal “interesting,” and was more optimistic than DeLorenzo. Kruse said that the heart of Apple’s success is great product, great delivery and great design. If GM wants to emulate that, it needs to start with the product.
“They need to design some amazing cars that are visually stimulating,” said Kruse, who has more than three decades of experience in the car business and now runs her own Anaheim, Calif.-based consultancy, Kruse Control. “If GM can capture how good people feel when they purchase an Apple product, they can succeed.
