GM's New Media Strategy Reveals Ongoing ADD

A lot has been written about GM’s dysfunctional corporate culture, much of it here. Thanks to the mean meme, GM CEO Fritz Henderson has been forced to add a bizarre explanation of how a consummate GM insider can reform the sclerotic bureaucracy that vomited him forth. Up? Anyway, Fritz has been hard at it, deigning to dignify ex-Car Czar Bob Lutz’ in-house media mouthpiece (FastLane) with his presence. Yes, well, bully for him. But you have to wonder about the CEO’s promise to create a laser-like focus on New GM’s 34 (count ’em 34) nameplates when the company is creating and abandoning websites like a phishing scheme. Anyone remember GMNext?

Either I’m having delusions of grandeur or GM must be reading TTAC. (Or both.) Yesterday, I asked why GM hadn’t done squat with the site for months and months and months. Lo and behold, today we get an update. In fact, it’s an entire redesign! New information? Uh, no. Recycled information without any unifying theme? You betcha. The future today box links surfer(s) to GM’s hybrid wheel, which includes all the “light” hybrids that GM’s recently axed. D’oh! The strapline’s the best bit: “Where we live online.” As I said, GMNext’s been in a coma for a long, long time.

And so to GM Facts and Fiction, which leads with the fact that “GM’s corporate ownership structure has not changed.” To wit:

General Motors remains a publicly traded company, which means we are owned by the people who hold stock in the corporation – our shareholders. GM President and CEO Fritz Henderson runs the company, and the GM Board of Directors – led by interim non-executive Chairman, Kent Kresa — oversees the corporation’s activities. That being said, there’s no denying that we wouldn’t be here today without the financial support of the U.S. Government and U.S. taxpayers – for which we’re grateful and appreciative.

Again? Still? You could always check the press release on the site to see on that “publicly traded” company’s 363 “New GM” deal—provided you like your news twenty days (and counting) late.

The new new new place to go for new news about New GM: gm.com/restructuring. Or is that gmreinvention.com? The latter is best for those of you who might worry that GM has abandoned its deeply held conviction that GM’s quality problems are all in the customer’s mind. [ Progress report my ass.]

Rick Spina

Yesterday’s quality announcement by J.D. Power and Associates suggest it’s time for perception to sling-shot its way into reality when people think about General Motors — especially when it comes to quality. When I hear or read disparaging remarks about GM vehicle quality, I get rattled because more often than not, the comments are not true.

More often than not? Tell us about that not, Rick. No? And why can’t we embed the videos? There’s a killer cut on GM’s reinvention by GM CFO Ray Young, who tells us that the US and Canadian governments will own 72.5 percent of New GM. Hold the phone! Ray says the governments and the UAW will start selling their shares in New GM to the public in . . . 2010. GMNext year? Seriously?

Question: would you buy shares in a bankrupt automaker that can’t focus on communicating with its owners (that’s you!) through ONE website? I wouldn’t recommend it.