You wanna party? Not on GM’s dime.
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A wise editor once said that the health of a company can be measured by the quality of the hors d’oeuvres it serves. For years, General Motors served among the best hors d’oeuvres around.
No longer. As part of its ambitious plan to shore up liquidity by raising $5 billion through loans and asset sales and save $10 billion through cost cutting, GM has been liberally applying the hatchet to its marketing, promotions and advertising budgets.
Already revealed were GM’s plans to cease advertising during next year’s Academy Awards and this fall’s Emmy Awards. Now, as first reported in the Detroit News, GM says it will cancel its biggest and fanciest party of the year, GM Style, held as a kickoff for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit each January.
The 2-year-old GM event, known for heaps of top-shelf appetizers, as well as liberal helpings of celebs such as Carmen Electra, ex-athletes such as Joe Theismann and Jerome Bettis, recording artists such as Kid Rock and Mary J. Blige, and mayors-turned-jailbirds like Kwame Kilpatrick, immediately became the social event of the season in the Motor City. It also must have cost a fortune.
Sadly, it’s not a huge surprise. Advertising budgets for the Big Three automakers are slumping — down about 16% in the first quarter, according to one study, and sales are down a bunch too — 17.5% for GM, 13.9% for Ford Motor Co. and 22.8% for Chrysler through July, according to Autodata Corp.
Of course, GM still spends gobs of money on marketing — more than any other automaker, and more than a few free lunches are included in that tab.
The good news: A well-placed Chrysler spokesman confirmed that the company’s much-loved Firehouse party, also held at the Detroit auto show, has not been canceled. The three-day event, held at an old fire station across the street from the convention center, is something of an industry institution, complete with drunken auto executives, drunker auto journalists and, last year, drunken cowboys who helped drive a herd of cattle up the street for the introduction of the 2009 Dodge Ram.
Well, it hasn’t been canceled yet, anyhow. ‘Everything is on the table,’ the spokesman said, ominously.
So, what will GM do without GM Style? A bake sale? Bingo?
--Ken Bensinger
Video of 2008 GM Style event courtesy of General Motors