VIDEO: The Young Lords at the NY Auto Show

This is exactly the type of individual advertising the Pontiac brand needs. Unfortunately the customers you seek are exposed to a tremendous amount of local advertising from dealerships and almost 100% of the time the brand is yoked with Pontaic/Buick/GMC being repeated over and over and over and over and over again.

On the radio, in print adds I am feeling that the Pontiac brand is slowly being widdled away in the constant humdrum, confusion, and complexity of the defunct and disassociated branding traditions that pervades what are always the weakest of the American brands.

Ironically this all is happening at a time when we are making the greatest efforts at differentiating Pontiac's products and brand focus. But in the end those efforts will all be for naught if the local marketing disasters continues to cut down the tremendous efforts of Pontiac's focused national campaign and individual brand driven product development focus.

In the end all we did was confuse the customer as this great effort in brand distinction and differentiation is slowly cut down with a thousand local little cuts to the distinctive branding efforts.

So in the end our brand distinction efforts are being waged from the top down, but brand perceptions are shaped from the bottom up. It is local advertising, dealership adds, radio spots, and the local billboards that are actually shaping Pontiac's image, or should I say to be more accurate, destroying its image with the yoked confusion of tripple branding that has successfully killed AMC and Eagle of AMC/Jeep/Eagle fame, and Plymouth of Chrysler/Plymouth fame and so on.

In short...In the end it's all just a vague contradiction to the consumer. What is a brand? A brand is something already communicated. If that brand is connected to things that confuse and don't communicate that message, the message is lost and so too is the brand in the end.

Confusion is the end game to any brand.

We recently took a trip to Florida in Our 2007 Impala and i am happy to report that we averaged over 31 miles per gallon on the 4000 mile trip.

Spare me.

Edward, that’s a very good point you have made. Why isn't Pontiac like Saturn? GM has made Saturn out to be a completely different brand from GM but when you think of Pontiac you think of GM and Chevy. Pontiac needs to take some cues from Saturn’s marketing and try to be an only brand.
Also quit associating Pontiac and GM with rappers like 50 cent. Those people are disgusting and a terrible roll model. There are very few people that can associate with those so called Gangster rappers, it’s embarrassing.

"Check out this cool video of the Young Lords rehearsing for their performance at the Pontiac Garage stage at the New York Auto Show."

This certainly proves that "cool" is only in the eye of the beholder.

This video is intended to re-brand Pontiac exactly how? Nothing in this video makes me feel good about Pontiac as a brand, or persuades me to consider buying one. Instead, why didn't you tell people things such as:

* How well it's built.
* How well it's designed.
* What kind of warranty comes with the car.
* What kind of mileage I might get.
* What features this Pontiac offers that aren't available with other auto brands.
* What kind of after sale service Pontiac dealers provide.

Why not emphasize the practical and important things that car buyers need to know to make a sound decision involving tens of thousands of their dollars?

I'm no marketing expert, but if I were on your board of directors, I'd be upset that some VP spent money on this as a Pontiac promotion.

Pontiac should be sold as the maverick brand. As it was in the past, kind of the inovative (like the endura front bumper from '69) and it wasn't the main stream Chevy or Ford or now Honda/Toyota/Chevy/Ford.. The thing they still have right is the sport's car image. They just need the car's to back up the claim.

This is all so CAR. Is 50 cent CAR too?

Have you heard? Pontiac is CAR.

I think the entire Pontiac marketing team and advertising agency should be fired.

Looks like a fun party!

Noel Park said: "Spare me."

I'll second that Noel.

I'm not rushing out to buy their stuff.

I did go to iTunes and buy a copy of "History Repeating" by "The Propellerheads" with Shirley Bassey after hearing it in that Jag ad.

She has some voice.

The Buick Invicta was nice but that BAIC gold sedan was somthing. Although they just showed the one side picture, it could be my next car. Those guys from Chysler might look at it as their next 300. Beat them to the punch.