You’d think with the world watching as the worlds greatest automotive company declares bankruptcy, the first effort to rebuild the brand would reassure you that they still know how to produce quality - would at least mention it?
The reason GM failed was that they took their eye off the ball, and refused to listen when Americans started buying smaller, higher quality, better fuel efficiency from companies that didn’t change the trim a little bit and try to convince us that a cat was now a dog.
Telling the American people that “This is not about going out of business. This is about getting down to business” in a spot full of canned imagery including hockey, football, baseball and horse racing- isn’t about getting down to business at all, it’s more mumbo-jumbo from a company that has not only failed it’s stockholders, stakeholders but our entire country.
When the saying used to be “What’s good for GM is good for America” you can’t just slap some anonymous announcers voice on top of emotional images like a tattered flag waving and expect people not to wonder why our government just backed you up.
Lee Iaccoca set the standard when Chrysler took a bailout, coming on camera with a direct and honest apology for failing- and making a promise to come back. What this spot says is that GM doesn’t even have anyone left with balls enough to lead them out of their mess.
Compare this Chrysler spot from 1984, and you’ll understand why GM still has no clue about what “Getting down to business” means.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is proving why they are at the top of almost every agency search consultants list. Burger King continues to have same store growth after years of failed campaigns, and changing agencies. VW was almost ready to give up on the US market, again, but have at least started to rebound sales. But what started out as an embarrassingly bad intro for Microsoft with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, and then into an “I’m a PC” has now hit pay dirt by not even talking about Microsoft’s products, but by doing a comparison between PC hardware and Apple hardware.
“Laptop Hunters” is credited with changing perception of brand value, according to a BrandIndex study:
Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to fall shortly after and, despite brief rallies, hovers around 12.4 today.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has risen from near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2.
Hefty gains in a short time, although Apple hasn’t sat idly by:
But, while this battle royal can wage for years, the real reason that Crispin Porter + Bogusky keeps winning for their clients is that they get the fundamentals right.
They know that advertising is supposed to surprise and delight, not inform and sell. They take great pains to make sure that you might actually want to talk about the ads they do around the water cooler at work the next day.
Today, they pulled one out of the hat for me. I own a copy of “Hoopla” which is their monograph. For the most part, it’s heinously designed making it almost impossible to read, but, inside the back cover- I discovered (via a tweet by Alex Bogusky) there is a secret second book:
I’ve also been watching the CP+B Ebay auction of their interns time:
ANNOUNCING THE CP+B INTERN AUCTION
In the past, our interns have created work for companies like Burger King, Volkswagen, Guitar Hero and Microsoft. And now they can do the same for you. Bidding starts at $1 for three months of service with all proceeds going to the hardest working people we know - the CP+B interns themselves. So bid early and often, and world-class advertising can be yours for a fraction of the going rate.
It’s innovative, it’s interesting and it’s not strictly advertising. It’s a conscious effort to manipulate and shape contemporary culture, cajoling and dancing outside the boundaries of conventional advertising wisdom. Everything can be an ad if you make it interesting enough.
And that’s why they are winning awards, accounts and owning the crown of the Hoopla kings.
