You know you’ve got trouble when your company’s having a very public congressional colonoscopy and the first question your in-house PR team throws at the Chief Financial Officer is “Why are you confident GM has vehicles the public wants to buy?” Uh, guys? Ray’s a beancounter. You know, accountant? Like Rick. And Fritz. If you want someone to explain why our cars are so wicked pissa talk to Bob Lutz. Oh wait. OK. Carry on. (BTW: Did GM hire Bill O’Reilly to teach Ray how to gesture? If so, it didn’t work.) After his warm-up, Ray tells the faithful that GM has done a lot to restructure over the years. In fact, if I hear that one more time, I will finally surrender my grip on reality and equate GM’s failed attempts to rectify all its other failed attempts at “right-sizing” the company as akin to saving fresh-faced orphans from members of the Man Boy Love Association. BTW. Do you want to know why GM is doomed? Because Ray Young honestly believes GM now has a focused branding strategy, bolstered by brand-new “incremental actions,” which will speed-up GM’s previous [targetless] turrnaround plan. Which was going great before GMAC Wall Street screwed-up the U.S. economy. Or so I hear.
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Is it not somewhat ironic that GM’s chief finance guy (an oxymoronic position at best at this juncture) is an Asian-looking guy with just a touch of the infamous Engrish accent? There can only be one answer…
Toyota got a diabolical recruit from the home office and performed a covert insertion of this fellow into the maw of their biggest competitor! His mission was create mayhem and confusion, sowed from the inside. An Alger Hiss for GM! The plan is going well he is anxious to report to his masters in Toyota City I am sure.
I would love to see TTAC have an expert in human gestures and facial expressions review this film and the Congressional Testimonies to see where their words are betraying their body language.
I think it’s safe to say that when GM goes TA next month, Ray will probably not be getting his own television show.
I must confess I stopped at “GM has an amazing portfolio of products …” Delusion can only take you so far.
Ray says they have a grand strategy, but I don’t think that’s true. All they take are baby steps.
What they need to do is file for bankruptcy, and in the best tradition of Wal-Mart – and keeping in mind Michigan’s horrible economy – follow a slash-and-burn strategy:
- Dealers? Who needs them!
- Brands? Kill every redundant brand/model!
- Bonuses? What for?
- Transplant pay? You’re lucky to have a job! $10!
- Detroit? We’re moving to Texas! Move if you want a job!
That’ll cut a huge portion of the staff and the company can use the cost savings to pony up for better materials and a 10/100k warranty on all new vehicles. They can also have real salesmen provide dealer training.
Really, drastic changes are required. Nudging the wheel one degree at a time didn’t avoid the iceberg…
Adub: GM does have a “grand” strategy, it’s worth about a thousand bucks.
Lutz has been completely non-existent in all of this… did he fall off the face of the Earth?
GM probably has the worlds largest portfolio of technologies that they don’t put in their cars or sell to the consumer. They do all that research and then file em away.
“GM has world class cars” I can think of two…possibly 3 out of how many? If you fire a shot gun you’re bound to hit something. This sounds like their grand strategy.
I could nit pick on almost every statement he makes. I only got about 3 minutes and decided I couldn’t watch anymore. Are those arms really his?
@Stein I must confess I stopped at “GM has an amazing portfolio of products …” Delusion can only take you so far.
They certainly are amazing, in the same way that a 3 legged dog is amazing. Not good, just amazing.
Ok, according to the video time counter in the right-hand corner…
…I made it to 53 seconds.
NEXT!!!
Good Grief, even 53 seconds was painful!! :)
Too funny!!…I posted w/out having even read the above comments! I promise, I wasn’t trying to repeat what others had already said (haha).
Ray, good news and bad news -
First the bad news: the video didn’t get you the $14 billion.
Now the good news: you gave hundreds of nerds confidence that they will not have the worst dating video ever.
I think we should post a link to William Hung of American Idol in tribute.
And GM wants to keep GMC alive so that they can maintain the distinction between professional grade and built like a rock?
Another marketing failure. They should have had a comely PR lady sitting across from him doing the interviewing, rather than the power-point slide business. BS, certainly, but par for the course these days definitely an improvement. I was in for a minute–about half of that spent thinking about how his shoulders look like Mister Rogers’s.
@Adub: That’s not fair to Hung, he was never in denial about his musical talent. Link instead to that Carly woman with the tattoos, who (before AI) got a $2.2m record deal and sold less than 400 albums. (I can’t remember her last name, nor can I summon the energy to search for it.)
Speaking of AI, I want to know what how the Ford sponsorship will be affected if they get a taxpayer loan…
I don’t see anything wrong with his presentation, other than the random gestures unconnected with the words.
On the other hand, I do expect a CFO to have a very good finger on the pulse of a business. They have to know where the money is coming from to finance ongoing operations.
This money can come from raising capital (selling GM stock). No, that’s out. It can come from raising debt (selling GM bonds or bank borrowing). No, that’s out. It can come from product revenue. Strike three.
Since a going concern MUST generate revenue from its operations if it is to be anything more than a welfare queen, he should be asking why they are making but no one is buying.
He should be asking why in recent years red tag sales have coincided with sales increases. Then he should conclude that the price they set for their products is higher than the market can bear, and then lower them accordingly.
I mean, he is the bean guy?