Is There Such a Thing as Bad Press?
Everyone’s talking about the Chevy Tahoe. To help promote the new SUV, the folks at GM launched a make-your-own-commercial site. Unfortunately for them, many of the resulting ads make jokes about global warming or question the car’s quality. As is happening with increasing frequency, the story has bubbled up out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream media:
“The issue here is that GM is providing a public display of the feedback versus keeping it in house,” said Gordy Abel, vice president of marketing agency Carat Fusion. “An open community can see all responses. In my opinion (GM) needs to do a better job of screening these types of contests in the future to make sure the content complies with the rules before it is posted.”
Still, everybody’s talking about the Chevy Tahoe, and that can only help car sales. The people creating negative ads likely aren’t SUV buyers in the first place, so I’d guess that the long term results will be positive for GM.