Free Paper Example on Advertising Campaign for General Motors Company

Introduction

Globally, organizations employ a vast range of advertising campaign strategies to reach their targets and eventually meet the specified organizational goals and objectives. In this study, General Motors Company, which deals solely in selling vehicles, will be evaluated. Its current Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) techniques will be discussed and reassessed if they have any challenges, and then a new advertising campaign established to correct the identified mistakes. The company has been selected because it deals with products whose demand is needed continentally, thus the need for a better advertising campaign that targets all projected customers. General Motors (GM) has its headquarters in the United States. Its activities include manufacturing, designing, marketing, and distribution of cars or car parts to its dealers in and outside the United States (General Motors Company, 2010).

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Targeting

Currently, General Motors is mostly targeting middle-class customers with the Chevrolet range in the largest markets such as Brazil, China, and Russia, to gain sustainability and an edge of competitive advantage in the Automobile industry. GM's vision statement is to manufacture vehicles with "zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestions." However, the vision has not been easy to achieve in the past, due to the outstanding presence of crucial competitors operating in the same industry, in the stated targeted countries. Toyota Motors ™ is the leading competitor, while others include Honda Motors (MH), and Ford Motor Company (FMC) (General Motors Company, 2010). To gain competitive advantage, GM is currently using various elements of IMC to promote awareness for their existing products, retain its customers, and promote its new releases in the market. The increased concentration of other dealers in the automobile industry, motivated GMC to implement a positional differentiated marketing strategy while deeming customer satisfaction as their crucial compliment. The differentiation is typically based on “place” in the marketing mix.

Current Advertising Campaign and Elements of IMC

One of the differentiation strategies is the use of its three abbreviated letters G, M, and C as the logo. Branding is a useful tool that companies can use to differentiate themselves from other competitors and promote the product. However, the choice of logo (GMC) was ineffective because it does not imply motivating customers to purchase it. However, applying symbols and figurative language is a significant IMC strategy. The company also uses the slogan “We Are Professional Grade” to persuade its potential buyers. GMC decided to shift to Holden, which is currently the unit name. Holden uses the symbol of a lion to produce some of the wildest vehicles in the world (General Motor Company, 2010). Naturally, Lion, as an animal, is recognized for its superiority or rather dominance in the jungle over other animals. Similarly, a Lion symbol has motivated customers to purchase the product, with the desire to explore the secret being the used symbol. Consumer satisfaction has proven to be successful with the company. Nevertheless, the current advertising campaign has failed to use the correct channel for obtaining a broader market. It also does not evaluate the results of its campaign strategy as active as other competitors in the market, such as TM. In the next section, a new advertising campaign will be proposed that considers all the three elements of the IMC strategy: consumers, channels, and evaluation of the strategy.

Creating the Advertising Campaign

GMC should use the Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (S-T-P) marketing strategic process to enlarge their targets into other countries and states. Market segmentation is a key tool for dividing the target customers into various categories based on age, gender, and social status. Perhaps reducing the vehicles' prices from an average of $1million to $30,000 will help target a larger group, including the low-income earners. There is no doubt in saying that several people from developing countries and few European countries are low-income earners, but could provide the company with the most significant percentage of profit if they are targeted. As earlier observed, the positioning strategy used by GMC or Holden is placed, but there are options to include consideration for people, price, and promotion. To target most people, the company needs to manufacture various brands of vehicles whose prices are affordable. Having the most reputable and dominant brand in the United States and other largest economies in Europe gives GMC the most substantial market opportunity to advance, and even attract a broader audience. Perhaps, GMC should shift from using its website and logo alone as the advertising campaign model, and equally use social media and digital media methodologies in its newly identified market segments.

Inclusion of Other IMC Elements

The above advertising campaign strategy is useful because it incorporates all the three essential elements of the IMC strategy. More consumers are being targeted, and useful channels are used to reach targeted consumers. Besides, the results can be tracked when an ad advertising campaign is used, easing the process of evaluating the strategic results. Moreover, the positioning strategy is broader with the new campaign because people, place, prices, and promotion elements have all been covered.

Objectives, Rationale, and Reasoning for the Campaign

Facebook and YouTube advertising are the two most recommended campaign techniques for GMC. YouTube will act as a digital media platform, while Facebook as a social media platform. Studies done by Everson et al. (2013) postulated that about 3 billion subscribers use YouTube every month. Related studies by Perrin (2015) indicated that about 1billion people log on Facebook daily. It shows that these two promotional strategies are vital to completing a successful S-T-P process. The digital and social media advertising campaign will drive GMC towards becoming an international company, with a large market segment, and eventually improve its competitive advantage, which will raise the sales.

The advertising objectives should also use the SMART strategy to ensure that the objectives are smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. A large number of online users will promote profitability as less costs are used for ads, and creating online platforms. Besides, the online marketing agency has a tracking technology that records the number of people who view the products, ads, and the company's platform. The records are essential, because they may help GMC to monitor the effectiveness and market trends. Understanding the market trends is also a tool that can be applied when changing preferences for market segments, based on when and where more profit is earned. In a nutshell, the company should use an ad advertising campaign for showing its new products, offer availabilities, and other convincing information about the product (Everson et al., 2013). The use of "Lion" as a logo is effective, as it will equally attract more consumers in local countries. Nevertheless, no image captions or texts in the name of the slogan should be used in the campaign. When handling a large population, people will perceive the information and interpret it differently. That might lead to negative perceived values on consumers, hence affecting the sales. More people were also found to be online at night or evening hours.

Conclusion

This leaves out other useful variables like people, price, and promotion. Using the present advertising campaign strategy, which prioritizes the use of its website and logo for marketing, and promotion, GMC has managed to attract most local customers and those from neighboring countries. Perhaps, the reason is that its website is more famous for the people surrounding the company than on other continents who are far from its reach. The phenomenon has created an environment, and reality has seen less GMC products on other continents than those of its vital competitors.

References

Everson, M., Gundlach, E., & Miller, J. (2013). Social media and the introductory statistics course. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5), A69-A81.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563212003755

General Motors Company (2010). General motors company annual report. 2010 this is the new gm. Journal of International Business, 55(4), 33-57. http://www.gm.com/content/dam/gmcom/COMPANY/Investors/Corporate_Governance/PDFs/StockholderInformationPDFs/Annual-Report.pdf

Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage. Pew Research Center, 52-68.
https://www.secretintelligenceservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PI_2015-10-08_Social-Networking-Usage-2005-2015_FINAL.pdf