Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Wikinomics Report Card: General M...
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Saved by 2 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-06-28
- Maximizen on 2009-03-12 - Tags collaboration , open , globalization , economics , casestudy
- Faheyr on 2008-06-28 - Tags gm , collaboration , corporate , blogs , social
Public Sticky notes
Being Open: Traditionally, GM has been a very closed organization. Even internally, its different brands acted with a silo mentality. In the Alfred Sloan era, GM used espionage tactics to quell union uprisings and in the mid 20th century, GM was blamed for killing American public transportation in the Great American Streetcar Scandal. In the 1990’s GM was accused of killing the electric car so that it could sell its high margin SUVs and trucks.
Highlighted by maximizen
GM invited consumers to a newly built Web site that offered video clips and simple editing tools they could use to create ads for the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The site gained online fame after environmentalists hijacked the site’s tools to build and post ads on the site condemning the Tahoe as an eco-unfriendly gas-guzzler. GM didn’t take ads down, which caused even more online buzz. Some pundits said GM was being foolhardy, but the numbers proved otherwise. The Web site quickly attracted more than 620,000 visitors, two-thirds of whom went on to visit Chevy.com.
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Most importantly, sales of the Tahoe soared.
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This hugely successful campaign generated a lot of buzz for GM at a very minimal cost. With GM’s negative operating margins, cutting down advertising expenses through peering could greatly reduce costs and improve the bottom line.
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