The last twenty-four hours has been full of articles, blogs, tweets, surveys, all questioning the wisdom of the folks at Chevrolet who were apparently seeking to remove “Chevy” from the brand’s lexicon (NYTs 6/10/10). Predictably, people were shocked and the Chevrolet folks accused of varying levels of insanity, some even questioning their patriotism.
Thankfully, as the day wore on, Chevrolet made an effort to explain that it had been mis-understood (see the press release) and that the memo leaked to the New York Times had been “poorly worded.” Unfortunately for the folks at GM, this whole incident has just added fuel to the fire for those folks who want to find fault with every thing the company tries to do. If you take the GM folks at their word, what they were trying to do really isn’t crazy.
At the heart of this dust-up is a real issue. How to most effectively manage a global automotive brand.
Here’s a video of Alan Batey explaining that indeed “Chevy” is just fine but that “Chevrolet” is the global brand:
Put aside Mr. Batey’s understandable defensiveness and his desire to assure us that “Chevy” is OK. (more…)
