Critics Attack GM Ad Campaign
Detroit, Michigan based General Motors was the target of a great deal of criticism in recent months that raised the ire of opinion columnists around the United States. The company had ran an ad that featured their Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ed Whitacre saying that they had repaid their loans from the government in full, which a large number of opinion shapers took issue with for political reasons. GM had previously been the recipient of bail out loans from both the US Department of Treasury and the government of Canada to help it make ends meet after a rough number of years. The non profit group, Competitive Enterprise Institute, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, along with several Republican politicians that the company was falsely stating it had paid the loans back with its own money it raised from car sales. They insist that GM has only actually paid a small percentage of those loans and that the real pay off will not happen until GM goes public again and both the US and Canadian governments can sell their holdings in the company’s stock.
The former head of the Obama administration’s auto task force, Steven Rattner, has said that GM may have stretched the truth in order to build the company image. Now, they must try to focus on improving the quality of their new vehicle line up and avoid over emphasizing the Consumer’s Digest magazine awards they recently received. They were recipients of the Best Buy rating that actually costs the company just to mention in ads.