Erick Yao's Blog

I was reading Derek Li’s blog and found some interesting points regarding the GM’s ad. In class, Tamar has shown us the characteristic of advertising which included information, persuasion, and reminder. I am going to remind you, blog readers, of the video introduced by GM and posted on UBC blog by Derek.

In those types of ad, where the company is trying to position itself, persuasion is one of the main criteria. Throughout the ad, GM has shown many examples in which people have failed because of various reasons. GM related all those examples to its own failure in order to prove that it is not the only person/company that “fell down”. Because the audience is better able to accept certain facts if they have personally experienced it, I believe that this persuasion strategy is very effective. Along with persuasion, GM also included the reminder aspect in its ad. Indeed, after 100 years of operations, customers will have to be reminded about the existence of GM; as our teacher would say: “Hey Folks, we are still out there!” Also, while watching the ad, I personally think that GM was trying to differentiate itself from other car companies by admitting its failure and emphasizing its rapid recovery. Today, a lot of organizations are still not ready to admit something, and would rather blame external factors to protect their images.  Finally, GM released the ad during thanksgiving and sent out a message to the government, consumers, and taxpayer in general to thank them for their support (directly or indirectly) which appealed to consumers’ compassion. With all that combined, GM successfully created an emotional video that could potentially attract new or lost customers.