• Reuters, Friday, March 10, 2006 11:47 AM

General Motors Corp. is shifting gears on its marketing plan. The giant automaker's vice president of sales said the company will increase ad spending for its SUVs and trucks and start marketing its eight brands individually. "When I came into the job, what I realized is although we were being very efficient in our spend, we weren't being as effective as we needed to be," Brent Dewar, vice president of sales for GM's North American operations told Reuters. GM is struggling to reverse market share losses and address criticism that its national advertising campaigns have failed to connect with fast-growing U.S. markets outside its Midwest home. The overall plan also calls for GM to focus on local advertising campaigns in Southern California, Florida and the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. areas this year, Dewar said. "To be great at the national level, we first have to be great at the local level," he said. The new strategy will come at the expense of the company's incentive plan, which will be toned down. Dewar said consumers will not see the scale of discounting they saw in 2005, when GM offered a blowout "employee discount" program to all buyers.

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