"And in their darkest hour, General Motors tuned into the most powerful force of all – their customers. From consumer-generated ads to Bob Lutz's FastLane Blog, General Motors did what Japanese car makers had been doing for years. They really listened. And it was the start of their ultimate turnaround…"
- from "The History of Great American Turnarounds", 2929 Entertainment, aired on Jan. 5, 2025
This is probably old news to some of you, but I find it fascinating that Chevrolet is allowing consumers to create their own ads for the new Tahoe. As you can imagine, some consumers have created some very critical ads. However, I applaud General Motors for finally taking some risk. I'm sure the authors of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" would also applaud this bold move.
There is no doubt in my mind that we will see more of this. This is the start of an open and honest dialogue between General Motors and their customers. Is the dialogue always going to positive? Of course not. It isn't always positive offline, but it is too easy for General Motors to ignore private customer-to-customer conversations. It is a bit different when the conversations are out in the open, staring them in the face.
Sam Decker calls this "customer oxygen". No matter what you call it, it is healthy. I have long believed that a company should design its products with customers. That may sound obvious, but it's not. I created Coremetrics, a successful Web analytics business, based on the premise that companies like Accrue and NetGenesis had failed to do this. And their customers defected quickly.
