By Rebecca Chambers
Although the automaker bailout bill is still ongoing restructuring and negotiations, it might have been a different story if General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC, and Ford Motor Co. hadn’t ran an excellent campaign in effort to save their companies.
The “Big Three” automakers of Detroit knew that if they didn’t get the bailout, there would be serious repercussions for more than just their companies: local plants would shut down, workers would be out of a job and be unable to pay local businesses, and those would eventually shut down too.
By November 2008, The Big Three were hard at work garnering support for the $25 billion dollar automaker bailout that was receiving luke-warm support – at best – in Washington, D.C.
Public relations was going to make or break the automakers’ chances of getting the aid they so desperately needed.
To campaign in favor of the bailout, the GM stated on their Web site “what happens in the industry matters on Main Street,” and made sure that it was clear that without government aid, much more than the company would be at stake.
The Big Three made sure that a solid grassroots campaign was launched, and soon there were full-page ads in publications like The Wall Street Journal and USA Today expounding the virtues of lending money to American automakers.
Alongside this effort, local dealers were putting their own ads in their local newspapers, trying to convince Americans that it was a good thing to lend these automakers billions of dollars.
"The grassroots effort was to correct falsities and misperceptions that are out there and help people get accurate information about the significant impact of the U.S. auto industry on America," said Kelly Cusinato, a spokeswoman for GM in Detroit.
While many still question the viability of a bailout, as well as if automakers deserve one, automakers are still pleading their case to Congress and to the people. For all intents and purposes, it seems that their campaign was having an effect – blue collar America got behind the bailout after these advertisements started to saturate the media.
2 comments:
Before reading your post I hadn't heard anything about the big bailout that was going on, however, I think it's unfair that the media chose to make this situation "good" in a sense. The way ads are ran are very important for perception and cause. Excellent campaigns will receive more consumer interest and the other companies should just get over it.
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