GM: We're Sorry for Disappointing You!

There's no doubt that General Motors is the most popular carmaker nowadays but this doesn't necessarily happen thanks to the fact that it owns so many brands all around the world. Unfortunately for the largest carmaker in the world, for its employees, for Americans and for all of us, General Motors is now close to bankruptcy and the company can do nothing about it than to hope the government will approve its loan request.

Unfortunately (again), the United States Senate blocked the request for further negotiations, a fact that does nothing more than to put GM's future in balance.

But more importantly, General Motors tries to take advantage of all market strategies available at this time. While the initial letter sent by the company to 29,000 employees failed to impress, a new advertising campaign tries to convince Americans that GM is extremely important for the US economy.

And the most interesting fact is not the ad campaign per se, but the facts that General Motors mentions within the adverts. Initially planned to be published on December 8 on Autonews, the 867-word letter explains that General Motors acknowledges its mistakes and admits that it should reconsider its market strategy for the next year.

Here are a few paragraphs of the GM letter (for the whole advertisement, check out this link):

While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you. At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry. We have paid dearly for these decisions, learned from them and are working hard to correct them by restructuring our U.S. business to be viable for the long term.

If we run out of cash, we will be unable to pay our bills, sustain our operations and invest in advanced technology. A collapse of GM and the domestic auto industry will accelerate the downward spiral of an already anemic U.S. economy. This will be devastating to all Americans, not just GM stakeholders, because it would put millions of jobs at risk and deepen our recession. By lending GM money, you will provide us with a financial bridge until the U.S. Economy and auto sales return to modestly healthy levels. This will allow us to keep operating and complete our restructuring.