Joel Ewanick On "The Parent Company"

In recent interviews with Automotive News [sub] and AutoObserver, GM’s recently-hired marketing boss Joel Ewanick dished out some of the insights that have earned him the reputation for being an ace image guy. He tells AN [sub] that

Consumers don’t buy General Motors. General Motors sells nothing

Oh, really? Because GM decided to remove the GM Mark of Excellence from its vehicles right around the time it emerged from bankruptcy, the better part of a year before Ewanick was brought on board. Since the first Government Motors joke emerged on the internet, GM has sought to distance itself from its corporate umbrella’s brand… and this is the insight Ewanick is bringing to the organization? Hell, Automotive News [sub] suggested that “Stop mentioning General Motors” when he was hired in June of this year. Which leaves Ewanick only one choice: don’t talk about General Motors more than anyone might imagine.

AutoObserver notes

Ewanick even has been insisting lately on saying “the parent company” instead of “General Motors” or “GM.” He simply doesn’t want to give any quarter, any more, anywhere, to the notion of a corporate brand, because he believes it’s meaningless in helping sell vehicles and only gets in the way of the vehicle brands that must become clearer to American consumers.

Of course, there’s a fine line between emphasizing consumer brands and using the corporate brand to sponge up consumers’ righteous anger at GM’s bailout. Does Ewanick really want Americans to think of Chevy and Buick as truly independent brands, or does he just want everyone to stop talking about GM’s decades of failure?

We’re moving sheet metal instead of telling our story. We’ve got to get back to telling our story. What do we want to tell people about Chevrolet? We’re going to remind you from time to time that we’re part of the fabric of society

So Ewanick is against talking about GM, so he’s going to present Chevrolet’s “story” as being somehow authentically American? How does one separate Chevrolet’s contribution to “the fabric of society” without mentioning GM’s government ownership, bailout-bankruptcy, mass layoffs and dependence on overseas product development? According to AN [sub]

Ewanick said that to relax, he likes to watch auto auctions on cable TV. The shows reinforce for him the visceral connection that millions of Americans feel for specific brands of automobiles.

He said he noticed that most of the cars auctioned are GM products, and a lot are Chevrolets. He said he was surprised that one Chevrolet station wagon from the ’60s sold for $35,000. That’s the kind of feeling that GM’s four brands must tap into.

Rational, emotional… Chevy can do it all. As long as it never mentions its parent company… or tries to do it all.

We made a conscious decision not to get too fancy about the brand as we launch these vehicles. We don’t want to get in the way of ourselves

In fairness to Ewanick, it can be tough to outline a vision… perhaps he should start with explaining the problem he was brought in to fix.

My boss, Mark Reuss, asked me to bring people into the organization that will challenge the way we look at things. As you go through a war and you get too close to things, you forget. You forget to see things through the eyes of the consumer

Wait, are we sure Ewanick wasn’t hired to be GM’s corporate PR boss? Because his ability to hide the truth about GM seem far more compelling than his ideas about selling GM’s cars or rebuilding its brands. In fact, his first truly innovative move in terms of selling GM’s products was just announced [via AN [sub]]: for the launch of the Chevrolet Cruze, GM is encouraging dealers to offer comparison test drives in Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas. Getting customers into those two market-dominating but aged competitors should help change perceptions about Chevrolet the way Ewanick was able to change perceptions about Hyundai, but goosing test drives has little to do with Chevrolet’s contribution to “the fabric of society.”

It’s nice to see Ewanick getting some of the “walk” right, but he might have waited a bit before so publicly talking the talk. After all, his interviews give the impression that GM has changed him more than the other way around.