I've been driven to write after seeing the following spot for GM several times in the last couple days:
In it Ed Whitacre, CEO of General Motors, assures us that GM is back on its' feet, having repaid the government its bailout loan money with interest well in advance. I have to think that it's a great idea to use a "don't worry" campaign, regardless of how fresh Whitacre's news actually is, because it's still prime time to pounce on Toyota and try to win one for the domestic automakers.
Ironically in what I assume is unrelated news, GM dropped Chevrolet's ad agency this week. It's significant because Campbell-Ewald is the premier agency in Detroit (or at least the only one I could name there based on my rudimentary knowledge with no further research). Literally every Chevy ad you've seen ("Like a Rock," "An American Revolution," et all) has been the work of C-E.
But all that is neither here nor there.
The Whitacre spot reminded me of another CEO speaking on behalf of his company in TV spots, and maybe it did for you too. Remember Sprint's Dan Hesse?
These ads, ranging back to 2008, never did it for me. For one, they're pretty awful. Advertisers use spokesmen because people pay attention to celebrities (or so research somewhere suggests). When your spokesman is your smug new CEO, people have no reason to put down the Cheetos and listen (or even keep it on the same channel).
Secondly, all I ever took away from these ads was who the CEO was. Maybe it's because the GM spot is still fresh, but it seems a lot more respectable because it seems like a special message. Hesse was barking at me about the wireless revolution for more than a year.
I decided to look into this, and see if there was any way GM could have been influenced by Sprint in tossing their Chief Executive into the advertising. I didn't have to look far.
Turns out, Hesse and Whitacre are both former CEOs of AT&T, Hesse from 1997-2000, and Whitacre from 2005-2007. They were contemporaries in the wireless business for 20 years.
The executive sphere has certainly always been viewed as an Old Boys' Club of sorts, guys bounce from corporation to corporation and bring each other along regardless of industry knowledge. The last thing GM should want to do is remind people of that: it doesn't make people want to buy your products when they consider that you're making $60 million a year in a job that your old connections got you.
So here's my advice for General Motors and Mr. Whitacre: quit while you're ahead. You have a good thing going, with the worst of the economic crisis behind you. This advertising message is cute and I believe justified, but you toe a fine line when you personify the company with the CEO. Don't let Ed follow in Dan's footsteps and become just another commercial talking head, or worse, just another reviled, smug chief executive.
