![]() When you think of the world’s most desirable brands and products, the first thing that comes to mind is vision care, right?īut all the ridiculous packaged goods mumbo-jumbo in the world could not overcome weak products and too many divisions and models. Sad but true: a guy whose expertise consisted of crunching the numbers to move contact lenses and saline solution was leading marketing for the world’s largest car company. Instead, GM appointed Ron Zarrella, an operations executive from Bausch and Lomb, as the top marketing executive at the company. Given that cars are an infrequent, expensive and emotional purchase (yes, even the most rational buyer makes a statement with their choice of car, even if just to signal “I care nothing for cars…”), a good source for “outside” marketing talent would be from industries that create desire and build strong images, like fashion, technology, luxury goods and entertainment. GM’s brand management debacle of the 1990s was one of the worst plagues ever unleashed on the company. The Renaissance Center, by contrast, is a dismal post-modern pile on the Detroit River, derisively referred to as “The Tubes.” It was eerily prescient in 1997 that GM was “heading down the tubes.” The General Motors Building was one of the finest examples of neoclassical renaissance architecture in the U.S., and for years showcased the power and success of GM. One tidbit noted by Automobile Magazine in the front of the October issue was the fact that General Motors was leaving its landmark headquarters building, designed by noted architect Alfred Kahn, and moving operations to the Renaissance Center, a failed downtown revitalization project that had originally been built by Henry Ford II. Automobile Magazine took a look at what was in store for 1997 from GM’s eight divisions in the October 1996 issue: were there any breakout hits in the making? Rather than building better cars and trucks, GM’s focus was on financial engineering, browbeating suppliers and deploying the worst sort of marketing gimmickry. The company had rebounded from its brush with bankruptcy in the early 1990s, but the core of the company’s dysfunction was far from resolved. ![]() (first posted ) General Motors entered 1997 with the worst kind of delusional attitude.
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