The other day, I told somebody that a particular company was small, “no General Motors.”
Now, I realized right away that this phrase has kind of lost its punch, and I switched it over to Wal-Mart, the biggest corporation in the world. General Motors, of course, is just a shadow of its once world-dominating self.
But GM is trying to rebuild. Just this morning, the corporation crawled out of bankruptcy court from the financial wreckage and debt that this once-great company had become.
Nearly two thirds of the firm is now owned by the governments of Canada and the United States, but executives say they are committed to reviving the company and the brand, returning both to the private-sector control.
So, going forward, there will be a fascinating public relations case study to watch. Just how will GM try to separate its old image as a tired, full-of-itself brand from the nimble, upstart it wants to become?
Organizations can’t ignore their past because other people still hold opinions about the company based on what’s come before. As the first step in any effective public relations strategy, you have to understand existing perceptions and their impact on behavior.
In that way, negative perceptions can sometimes be used as a positive by the organization.
It’s like judo: The weight of a negative perception can be used as leverage to get an organization going in a new direction. In this case, General Motors might have some fun at its own expense, contrasting its fat-and-lazy image of the past with the hungry-to-please brand it wants to be come. Or it could build on sentimentality for the old GM, as the firm tries to become a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Ultimately, though, the company will have to align its public relations efforts with reality. Do products live up to the story being told? Has the attitude changed in the way being portrayed? Does the firm known where it is headed, so that it can tell that story?
Only time will tell whether GM will succeed, but the show should be fun to watch and instructive to any organization that is trying to reinvent itself.
– Eric Blom
Tags: Brand, Branding, image, marketing, public relations, reputation
