• by Karl Greenberg , August 6, 2010

In this second installment based on a chat with Marketing Daily , Joel Ewanick, head of North American marketing for General Motors, talks about Buick, its brand equity and its "Moment of Truth" social-media site for Regal. Also, Ewanick explains the role of the new "marketing board of directors." And yes, he says, there is room for two luxury brands, as long as they aren't standing in the same room, or on the same space at auto shows.

Q: How important is the new Buick Web site, showing third-party endorsements?

A: We pushed that, we pushed to add more and make more of it, and get it out faster. Social media will be in everything we do. Everything we do should drive consumers back to our OEM sites. And all of the sites for all four brands are now in development. We will, in fact, have all new sites in the first quarter, maybe sooner for all brands. They are all in development.

Q: What does a site like that -- with Twitter, Facebook, and videos -- mean for Buick?

A: People are looking for reasons to buy, right? That Web site is key to the launch of that car. People are going to have more questions; they aren't familiar with the Buick brand. "Regal is a great-looking car, I get it, but I need to do more research." Buick is the hottest brand in America right now. We are going to sell 60,000 Lacrosse vehicles in a fairly tight market. The price point, at average, is very close to Lexus ES and C-Class Mercedes. These are the cars we are competing with. In terms of sales, we are doing this with almost no incentives.

Q: Why do you think Buick is doing well?

A: Two things. One is the strength of that brand was much stronger than anyone gave it credit for. It's almost like -- and it's just my theory -- it's almost like that brand was dormant, that it was in sort of hibernation, so no matter what you did to the brand hasn't really mattered. It was waiting for good-looking product.

Here comes Enclave, Lacrosse Regal and two more coming. Customer service is quite good: the dealer network is incredibly strong, even coming through the recession, those are some of the best dealers in America -- the GMC and Buick dealers. We owe them for delivering on quality, not using incentives, doing great customer service. We haven't incentivized any new products that have come out since over 18 months ago.

Quietly -- and nobody's talking about this -- most of the products in our lineup have the highest transaction prices in their segments. Nobody's catching that. The ones with incentives are getting rotated out. For me walking in, if you look at the cupboard? It's full. I went through every single significant launch from now 'til 2016. When you see it, there are no duds -- no cars where you're saying, "I wish they'd done this better, I wish they'd changed this, or added that."

Q: What's the difference in your mind between Buick and Cadillac?

A: There are a number of segments in the luxury world. There is a group of people who want different driving characteristics and also a different statement that certain luxury cars make.

You are going to find us talking about Buick being the luxury that makes sense. You are going to see us being more true to our heritage with that brand. What you're not going to see right now is really dialing up what the brand is about. We are really staying focused on the product right now.

There is a fundamental reason for that. People had to see the product to get the answer to this question: "Is there a Buick there that I can look at?" As time goes on, we will define more what that brand stands for. In my opinion, Buick has the biggest upside of all the things we are working on. Considering that not long ago many people thought Buick would go away, even a year ago [and] here it is, the hottest brand in America.

Q: This marketing board: that's a lot of egos in one room. How does it actually work and how often will you meet?

A: We have four key agencies, and I brought those in: Goodby, Leo Burnett, Fallon, McCann. Met with [agency partners] and actually then had them meet with Ed Welburn, head of design. Again, we are trying to find these four swim lanes. We were taking shots at each other's work, which is a good thing for me. We found ways to make these swim lanes more defined.

Take "Never Say Never," which is a position we use for GMC truck. Now, there were actually a couple of lines in the Cadillac portfolio that were very close to that. So we realized that even though the notion we were trying to convey was dedication to building the best cars in the world, we said: "Let's find another way to make a turn on that so it doesn't sound exactly the same as 'Never Say Never.'" They are my sounding board.

Q: How often will you meet?

A: Every other month, forever, that's the goal. Let them be a sounding board for overall marketing.

Q: How important are the holding companies to you?

A: What I conveyed to those guys, and this is very important: I'm agnostic to the holding companies. It means nothing to me. What I want to know is, is there an agency who can manage these brands? Oh, by the way, they happen to be with this or that holding company? That's great -- that's nice to know. Are there efficiencies we find? Fine, but first can they bring great ideas to manage these brands? So I'm agnostic to the other things.

Q: You talked about a new focus on how GM will appear at auto shows. And how critical brand differentiation will be there.

A: You gotta get people in the cars. What's funny is other manufacturers are pulling away from this. In the past you have seen the parent company find efficiencies by putting everyone -- all the brands -- together at shows, and have then almost butting up against each other.

Where it makes sense -- we are going to move Cadillac physically so it's next to its competitors: next to BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Be in that neighborhood. Instead of being the parent company, we are going to split the brands up and put them physically near the competitors, where it makes sense to do that. But where they are all together you will see a clear wall. You will feel like they are four separate companies.

You won't feel like it's from the same place. Sometimes it's hard to do that because they allot space by companies. It's easier for them to say: "That corner's yours and we'll parcel the rest." We are saying: "We don't want to do that. We want to be near our competitors."

We are going to start doing that this year. That's just one small detail. The key to each one of these VPs of marketing is they have to look at this as their brand, not to find ways to save a nickel or dime by having these brands together. We don't want our brands to be penny wise and pound foolish.