"There are no advertising problems."

I came across a very good essay by Al Ries in Advertising Age (available online; just click the title of this post).

Ries takes GM's marketing to task. The brands don't stand for anything ... or they stand for too much. GM and Ford sell more cars than others in the U.S., he says, because they have more cars on the road (a kind of inertia), because they have more dealers (though they are only half as efficient as Toyota dealers) and because they give more, much more, in incentives.

GM also spends more on advertising. In fact, Ries reminds us, for the last seven years, GM has been the largest advertiser of all companies - not just auto companies - in the U.S, more than $3.4 billion last year.

"When GM had half of the U.S. automobile market," Ries writes, "it also had a finely tuned branding strategy. Chevrolet was their entry level car," and from there you moved through Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and up to Cadillac. "Except for Cadillac, today's GM branding ladder goes nowhere. Moving from Chevrolet to Pontiac to Buick is essentially a sideways move."

I won't spoil Ries's argument any more. Just go there and read it for yourself. (http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44738)

But I'll close as he did with his final statement on the subject: "What's wrong with General Motors? It's not an advertising problem. As a matter of fact, there are no advertising problems. There are only marketing problems, some of which can be solved by advertising."