Faces of GM

California Dreamin’

August 31, 2010 at 12:14 pm

Days: 74
Double shot espressos: 49
Tornado warnings: 4
Having a panic attack during a very important presentation: 1

I’m heading home this week.  No, don’t break out the celebratory cake and champagne yet. I still have a week left in my internship. I’m heading back to California for an employee outreach event with some other GMers. We’ll be in the San Francisco Bay Area for a few days and I’m so excited! The main goal of this event is to give GM employees the opportunity to get out into the field, spend some time in the trenches and meet customers and dealership staff one-on-one. Why is this important? Because anyone who works at a desk 8 hours a day knows that office walls can be quite isolating (even if you’re lucky enough to score a cube with a window).  No matter how many debriefing meetings you attend or post-mortem reports you read, you just have be there to fully take in the all the sounds, the emotions, the true feel of the environment in which our customers live.

Beautiful Bodega Bay near San Francisco. Thanks for the photo, Dad!

We’ll also be there to explore the greater San Francisco market and learn a little bit more about the people who make up one of the most culturally vibrant and economically powerful markets in the world. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Apple, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Pixar… the list goes on and on. But let’s be honest here. Both you and I know that this area has never been a stronghold for GM cars, or any domestic cars for that matter. Being a California native, I’ve been asked why I think this has been case. To be quite frank, I couldn’t pinpoint just one reason because California is incredibly diverse and complex (there are 30 million residents after all). It might be related to Hollywood and the obsession with all things European glamour. It might be related to California being the Japanese automakers’ advertising and marketing target decade upon decade.  I can’t say for sure if any of these reasons are correct, but I think a more important question is how we can break this trend and gain more customers in the future?

Last week I wrote about branding and its ability to stake claims in a certain market. How does this happen? Well emotional attachments with brands can run deep and often times strongly embed themselves in a culture like Gray’s Papaya in New York or even General Motors in Southeast Michigan. While this may seem like a daunting obstacle to overcome if you are new and trying to penetrate a market where certain brands are historically rooted, there is a glimmer of hope for change.  That glimmer of hope is called the Millennial Generation.

The Millennial Generation aka Generation Y

Who are the millennials? Also known as Generation Y, they are the current teens and twenty-somethings of this country (roughly 18 to 29). Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers most often associate millennials with mobile devices and social media, but there are some other cool and interesting characteristics that define this generation. According to the 2010 Pew Research Center on Millennials (thanks Professor Weinberger for sharing this with me!), millennials are also much more progressive and open to change. Another market research report from Packaged Facts finds that millennials have “little brand loyalty as ever cooler or trendier products churn across the retail stratosphere.” In other words millennials are not as brand loyal as previous generations and will take new brands into consideration as long as the products prove worthy. What could all of this mean for domestic cars on the west coast? A window of opportunity to win over a new market segment! Granted there will have to be a lot of Tweeting and Facebooking to get there, but with GM producing its best and coolest products ever (Hello! Can you say Volt?!?) things are definitely on the up and up in the California market.

Having been ushered into the GM world now and developing a  new and deep appreciation for domestic cars, I hope it will give me a fresh perspective as I head back to my home state.  Next week I’ll give you a quick synopsis of the employee outreach and our adventures in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ll also reflect on my summer here at GM and wrap-up the Cruzin’ with Ann series. Stay tuned!