Totally Confident I am Not

I just saw the new commercial for GM's Total Confidence Program and unfortunately it makes me realize that nothing much has changed when it comes to US automakers.

It is true that consumers, especially women, want to be able to trust and have confidence in the brands that they are giving their custom and their loyalty to, so GM has that part of the equation right. However, the rest of the equation just isn't working for me.

My perspective is that the reason why consumers lost confidence in GM is because they were incredibly short sighted and instead of building cars that consumers really needed - smaller, smarter and more fuel efficient - they continued to build the ones that the company thought would make them the most money. They also continuously shunned the idea of building cars that were really going to be more environmentally friendly in favor of those that were large and did very few miles to the gallon. The consequence of all of this bad planning, was that the company had to have a huge injection of bail out money; they have just taken another $5 billion this week.

So what do they do? They come up with something called The 'Total Confidence Program' that has nothing to do with righting any of the wrongs that have caused their problems. They have merely re-packaged some of the products and services they already had, such as a 5 year warranty and On-Star, and called them a Total Confidence Program. The campaign and the program have left me feeling that GM hasn't learned any of the lessons that it should have over the past 12 months and is just carrying on doing business the same way it always has.

I guess that I should be feeling 'totally confident' in GM at this juncture, but for some reason I am feeling 'totally unconvinced'.