Faces of GM

Branding and the City

August 19, 2010 at 3:36 pm

 Quick Stats
Days: 67
Double shot espressos: 42
Almost falling down the food court escalator: 1
Moments of feeling socially awkward when talking to important people: hundreds

A couple of weeks ago I attended the fifth annual BlogHer conference in New York City with a small group of GM employees. BlogHer is a conference celebrating women in the blogosphere and their ever growing influence in social media. The conference grows with each passing year and attendance at this conference was over 2,500. This may seem like a small number compared to other conferences like South By Southwest or the Consumer Electronics show, but keep in mind that these are 2,500 of the most connected and engaged people in the country. Proof in point, Twitter crashed twice on the first day due to all the tweeting at BlogHer.

Chevrolet was a proud sponsor of the conference and I was happy to help staff the Cruze product booth. Freshly coming off the National Media Drive and still running on fumes, I wasn’t sure if I would have the energy to enjoy BlogHer. But it was awesome! I met some fabulous bloggers (Hi Paul and Lee Reyes-Fournier!), got to snap pictures with pseudo-celebrities (see the picture of me and honey bear above) and gained some great insights on cars from New Yorkers. 

For three days I chatted with numerous people about cars and lifestyles. The most interesting conversations I had were with city slickers who all shared two basic sentiments with me. One, owning a car is a luxury in a big city.  Two, if you do have money, the automotive make of choice is usually European. Now it would be easy to say that big urban markets don’t fit with GM and simply turn our attention elsewhere, but the reality is that there is a global trend towards rapid urbanization.  According to a Population Reference Bureau report, 81 percent of the inhabitants of developed countries will be urban dwellers by 2030. In the U.S. more than half of all Americans live within 50 miles of the major coasts, according to the Center for Environment and Population.  So herein lies the great challenge of the future for the domestic car industry, how will we penetrate the ever fickle and style-discriminating urban markets?

I’m not claiming to know the answer to this question and no doubt this will be a very difficult issue to tackle, but my instincts are telling me that the answer perhaps lies somewhere in branding. In terms of products, GM cars are better than they have ever been. So we’ve effectively closed the gap of quality and performance. Now that GM is sitting pretty in the performance and quality category with other impressive auto makers, how do we differentiate ourselves and win over those trend-setting urbanites? 

Last year one of my awesome professors at Northwestern, Frank Mulhern, said something that really stuck with me (see dad?!? I am paying attention in class! Your money isn’t really going to waste). Professor Mulhern said that in any mature classically competitive market, each supplier essentially has equal access to the same technology and resources as his/her competitors. Thus everyone’s prices and quality ends up being about the same! (Unless you’re Wal-Mart!) With equal quality and equal prices, how does one distinguish his products from somebody else’s? The answer is (drum roll please)…..branding!

But this whole branding thing didn’t really hit me until my last day in Manhattan when I had some down time and I decided to wander around the city. After a couple hours of hoofing it from downtown to uptown, I worked up an appetite. Being a firm believer in “when in Rome do as the Romans do”, I decided it was only appropriate that I quash my hunger with the quintessential New York summertime nosh… the hot dog! But where to go? The Smoke Joint? PDT? The ubiquitous Gray’s Papaya? The equally charming Papaya King? Let’s not forget Papaya Dog. Overwhelmed with options, I called up my foodie friend for advice. He said go to Gray’s Papaya. I asked him why. He said, “What’s more New York than Gray’s Papaya?” There it was; branding at its finest.  Gray’s Papaya had somehow beaten all its equally delicious rivals and become the top New York dog. 

Now I’m not equating cars to hot dogs, but metaphorically, how can GM cars become the Gray’s Papaya of the urban city market? It’s pretty obvious that it’s going to be a challenge because there is some stiff competition out there. But GM has a pretty awesome lineup of products, so at the very least we’re comin’ out swinging in the urban branding battle.