Uh... Chevrolet? What?

According to the New York Times, some morons who work at General Motors decided that employees should refrain from using the word "Chevy" when communicating about their products.

Imagine if BMW insisted that its employees could only say Bayerische Motoren Werke!

Anyway - see the memo below:

"Chevrolet Team,

We wanted to write you a quick note requesting your support of our Chevrolet Brand. When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding. Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer. This is a big opportunity for us moving forward.

As you know, we are investing substantially to improve the consistency of our retail facilities through the EBE process. Aside from the facilities aspect of our branding, there are many other ways in which we can demonstrate this consistency. One way to achieve this is with the use of Chevrolet vs. Chevy. We’d ask that whether you’re talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward.

We have a proud heritage behind us and a fantastic future ahead of us... speaking to the success of this brand in one consistent manner will ensure Chevrolet becomes even more prominent and recognizable than it already is.

Thank you for your support of this effort!

Alan and Jim

P.S. We put a plastic “Chevy” can down the hall that will accept a quarter every time someone uses “Chevy” rather than Chevrolet! We’ll use the money for a team building activity."

Who are Alan and Jim? Alan is the Vice President for Chevy's Sales and Service, and Jim is Chevy's Vice President for Marketing.

Reading through the memo, it appears that Alan and Jim do not realize that "Coke" is not the proper brand name for Coca-Cola. It also appears that Alan and Jim believe that GM's marketing woes had something to do with brand ambiguity.

What is brand ambiguity? Generally it is a potential buyer's inability to discriminate between alternative brands.

Hm. So what was Don McLean singing about when he wrote "drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry" ?!

Are these two people complete imbeciles? Really? Chevy has a brand recognition problem? Who seriously thinks that Chevrolet, a French sounding name of Swiss origin, sounds better for a blue collar car company?

As a taxpayer, I'm not optimistic that the US federal government is going to get its money's worth from the GM IPO. Especially with these morons wasting time on these senseless efforts, instead of you know... drawing up <sarcasm> awesome marketing </sarcasm> efforts for the Chevrolet Volt.