Cadillac Needs Space From GM
By Chris Weiss
It must be difficult to establish yourself as a premium, luxury brand when you’re luggin’ around the much less attractive, more boisterous good ol’ boys in the back seat. Like a teenager trying to impress the most popular girl in school with his goofy, school-dufus cousin in tow, Cadillac has realized that the best way to convey the image that it envisions for itself is to distance itself from the family.
A report yesterday in Bloomberg details Cadillac’s efforts to shy away from GM, and all the baggage thereof, by changing its emails from xx@gm.com to xx@cadillac.com, removing the GM name from marketing and dealerships, and discontinuing GM-wide events like Red Tag Event. Cadillac will run its own marketing and promotional events aimed at luxury buyers.
The effort is part of GM’s revival strategy and is expected to help Cadillac boost sales by 28 percent this year.
I completely understand where Cadillac is coming from. Hell, if GM was my dad, I’d yell for police and swear up and down I didn’t know the crazy bastard. But is this really going to work? Are people really going to disassociate Cadillac and GM? Who are we kidding? It’s branding; of course they will. [via Bloomberg]
