How to kill your brands: the GMC Envoy

It's hard to keep track, but I think there are four versions of the GMC Envoy, if you only count the main offerings of the different GM Brands: the GMC Envoy, the Chevrolet Trailblazer, the Buick Rainier, and the -cough- Saab 9-7x. This can be a viewed as a lesson in how to quickly dilute your brands, thus killing them. There is actually only a superficial difference between these vehicles. There should only be one version: either the GMC or Chevrolet - whichever one you decide should be the GM Truck brand. Buick should be killed. You shouldn't have two GM Truck brands. And Saab should go back to making Saab's.

Then there is the GMC Envoy XUV, another contender for the Aztek successor. Kill it fast!

You can predict what will happen next: The Cadillac Envy! An Envoy with leather seats and aggressive looking headlights. The Saturn Vue/Chevrolet Equinox brand extensions will be next. When the Cadillac version of this platform comes out, that's when you know GM has died.

How Microsoft Windows Will Die

Not with a bang but a whimper. While I am still running Windows on my home and office computer, I have found myself successively replacing Microsoft products with alternatives, many of the open source and free, which are better than the Microsoft products. First to go was Office, then Internet Explorer. But what should be the most troubling part for them is now I am replacing pieces of the Operating System itself. I have replaced most of the Windows shell, explorer, with other things. I search for things using one of the Desktop search tools from Google, Yahoo/X1, or Copernic. So what remains of Windows? Just the filesystem, process handling and software libraries. So if just the kernel is left, Microsoft is going to lose, because there are a lot better kernels out there.

Microsoft Windows and Office will become a "legacy handler" for handling obsolete documents, not the means to create new ones. Adobe/Macromedia own a lot of the new standards. Google will push to the desktop. Linux will be the Operating System. And open source projects will fill in the rest.

The next Pontiac Aztek(s)

I know, the Pontiac Aztek is too easy a target. I'm not going to talk about the Aztek. But I am going to talk about the organization that released it. How did it happen? How did it get approved? Because no one is willing to say that the emperor has no clothes? There clearly was a committee that was looking at the individual attributes of the Aztek and not the whole.

If you think GM has learned its lesson, it hasn't because it release the evil twin spawn of the Aztek: The Saab 9-7X and 9-2X. The X must stand for stupid. Selling a Suburu and a Chevrolet as a Saab? You are putting the remnants of a distinct brand in a guillotine.

Stop Worrying About Market Share

I'll try to keep auto industry rants to only every fourth post or so. I hope.

I see they've reshuffled the top management at GM. It's not going to do anything unless they fix their fundamental problems. Here's one of them: concentrating on market share as a key business metric. This causes three problems: discounting and incentives, reluctance to kill dead brands and duplication of across brands (brand cannibalism).

Stop worrying about market share. Worry about profits and products. The only way you will ever increase market share is to build better products and have distinctive brands. You will never increase it on a sustained basis by incentives and duplication. You are treating market share as an ego thing - "We're falling behind Toyota!" You're already behind Toyota from a product perspective.

You've already heard about dead brands, and you'll hear more about brand cannibalism in future posts.

Open source, raise your aspirations

I was very skeptical about the quality of open source software, both from a quality, but especially from a usability perspective. But I have been amazed by the continuous and rapid improvement in these areas. It's still can't replace Windows XP for your average worker bee, but maybe in a year or so it could.

Linux + Firefox + Thunderbird + OpenOffice (substitute your favorite alternatives here) are becoming to be an exceptional package. But initiatives like Ubuntu are just as important. You have to pay attention to what it looks like.

But open source, raise your aspirations - don't just imitate Microsoft as many projects are doing. Do something better. Or the best you will become is a poor facsimile of Windows. You're imitating the Window XP desktop, Windows Explorer, the Start menu, etc. Stop it!

Mac OS is always trying to do it better. But I'll have my doubts as long as you can still eject a disk by dragging it to the trashcan.