Thickening Plots

When GM decided to pull its ads from the LA Times last week because it felt the paper had included, "factual errors and misrepresentations in The Times editorial coverage" of GM product, I was intrigued.  This is an unusually bold move for a corporation: we're pissed, it's our money, we're going home.

Now we have GM's VP of Communications, Gary Grates, showing up on the GM Fastlane blog to explain the decision.  Sort of.  Gary says they've seen the criticism of them being, "thin skinned," and decided to speak out.  Sort of.  He tells us that they've had lots of "professional" conversations with the Times, and are awaiting  the results of the "Times' process" before commenting further.

Fair enough.

So, here's the difference blogging's made.  In the past, do you think you'd have the VP of Communications acknowledging that GM's gotten its ass kicked in the press?  Right.  And, do you think you'd have heard a line like this:

But neither do we think that any business should remain mute when it sincerely believes it has been treated unfairly or attacked by reporting that is unsupported by facts and unrelated to reality. It is extremely rare that we take the kind of action we did with the Times, but it is fully within our right to spend our advertising dollars where we see fit.

It's our money, and we'll spend it any way we want.  Ballsy. 

In the newspaper/magazine world, there's this thing about Chinese walls between editorial and publishing.  The sales folks sell and the writers write, and never the twain shall meet.  Theoretically.

But, GM says, we're not a newspaper or a magazine.  We're an advertiser.  If you want to criticize us, criticize us.  But if we don't think you're being fair, we're gonna take our money and go home. 

Now, here's where it gets dicey.  GM still hasn't told us what they think the Times said that pissed them off so much.  Right now, they tell us, "it's between us and them."

Fair enough. 

But when all's said and done, they're going to have to be transparent about the things they judged to be unfair and give the rest of us a chance to make up our own minds about whether or not we agree with their judgment.

See, that's the thing about this new way of relating to the market.  You don't get to tell us what's real; we all get to decide for ourselves.

Comments

[Johnnie Moore]

Tom: I'm enjoying your continuing coverage of the FastLane Blog. My take is that these people are learning fast and they are being changed by blogging. Which is pretty good.

[Tom Guarriello]

Thanks, Johnnie. I'm impressed by how well they're doing. If the PR firm is still involved, they're using a very light touch.

[Jon Husband]

It's hard to escape the transparency afforded by words, links and minds ... evn tho' we're so used to authority saying "it's our _____ (money, idea, rule, whatever), we still have vestigial reflexes when information "comes to light".

What will 50 years of such conditions yield ?