GM Thinks too Many Democrats Buy Its Cars

Ezra Klein watches in amazement:

Ezra Klein: GM Makes Good Business Decisions: Apparently, GM just made Sean Hannity their spokesman. Their new ad campaign is the "You're A Great American!" giveaway, and who better to kick that one off than the guy who said a Kerry win -- which 48 percent of the country voted for -- would be a victory for the terrorists, and keeping Nancy Pelosi out of the speakership would be "worth dying for."

Guess they thought the problem with their cars was that too many folks bought them.

Comments

[howard]

i cannot figure out what GM thinks - or what some specific idiots at GM think - is the value proposition here.

[hack]

Hannity sounds like an excellent choice.

If I wanted to start a business selling crisp brand new dollar bills for $1.50 a piece, Hannity is who I would hire as a spokesman, because I know his listener base would have the right quantitative skills to appreciate my product.

[wfeather]

Actually, GM is releasing a new line of pickups aimed at the rednecks and their competition is Ford - look for Alan Mulally to bring out the F-150 Limbaugh Edition real soon now.

[andres]

Democrats, being reality based, buy mainly Japanese cars (or more expensive Audis or BMWs if they're really well off...) so I'm not surprised GM has decided to stick a finger in their eye. Serves the Dems right for hitching onto the bandwagon of Michael "Roger & Me," Moore...

[Bernard Yomtov]

Howard,

"i cannot figure out what GM thinks"

It gets much easier if you substitute "whether" for "what."

[BroD]

Makes perfect sense to me: if you're selling crap, find a spokesman with an audience which has demonstrated an appetite for crap.

[Doctor Memory]

GM still makes cars?

[RichB]

My all-time favorite example of marketing incompetence is the billboard that GM put up a couple of years ago on the approach to the Bay Bridge as you go from Oakland to San Francisco. It was one of those billboards with rotating vertical strips so that the message changed every 15 seconds or so. One message showed their pickup in a desert scene with the tag line "Death Valley". The next message showed a Plymouth subcompact in an urban scene with the tag line "Noe Valley". Is GM so clueless that they think anyone living in Noe Valley (where the average house price is well north of $1.5 million) would be caught dead driving a Plymouth subcompact? Do the marketing folks at Plymouth really view BMW and Volvo as their main competition? Did they not realize how ridiculous this billboard was for the 1/4 million people who saw it everyday? The irony of this is that while this billboard was on display, GM announced an advertising boycott of the LA Times after the automotive reviewer at the Times criticized GM's designs. GM keeps pedaling the story that all of their troubles are do to labor costs. Yeah right, as if there problems have nothing to do with incompetent management.

[Tom Marney]

I like to buy American, but I've never owned a GM vehicle. Now I guess I never will. By the time-- if ever-- I forgive them for this, they'll be out of business.

[Doctor Memory]

richb: Plymouth is a DaimlerChrysler brand, not GM. Maybe it was Pontiac?

[pgl]

My last two cars were made in Asia. I could care less that GM has hired a hack as its spokesperson. What I care about is value for money - and my money has never gone to a single GM product.

[me]

Many years ago, in a northern city, mostly blue collar, was a small hot dog shop. The owner, an immigrant who spoke broken English, ran the shop.

On the wall was a picture autographed by the local boxing hero. Also hanging was an award signed by the mayor.

I asked Frank one day, "Frank, why don't you have a picture of Ronald Reagan on the wall, you like him?" I will never forget his reply, "It is not good to mix business and politics. Every election is decided fifty-fifty. If I hang up one picture I will piss off half of my customers."

Perhaps the educated idiots running GM, maybe York or Kerkorian come to mind, should use take this immigrant's message to heart.

There is a reason drug addict Rush Limbaugh has no major advertisers. They stay away from controversy. The mess is the PRODUCT not the MASSINGER.

[save_the_rustbelt]

GM has a perfect record of managerial incompetence since the mid 70s.

How many ugly cars can one company design?

Why mess that up now with competence?

I'm a Republican and Hannity is like fingernails on a blackboard.