You may have seen GM’s ad during the Super Bowl. It pokes fun at Ford owners’ inability to survive the apocalypse because one’s truck model definitely changes survival odds.

The ad pokes fun at Ford, but is it enough to get angry over? Ford thinks it is.

Ford told Reuters that they have the safer pickup truck so even without the poking fun, GM is just wrong. Well, GM is not going to pull the ad because it’s a good ad. Why pull an ad even if it makes your competitor look bad? That’s the point of an advertisement.

Ford says that they are going to fight the allegations that they make an inferior truck not in court, but in the ad space. They will protect their claim of having the best-selling truck for the past 35 years.

It’s nice to see competition in the ad space. Even if both companies come out looking all the more foolish for their jabs at each other, the consumer gets the hilarious attack ads they make.

Users of the Send-to-Car service can send business listings or addresses found on Google Maps directly to their cars. The expansion of the service is great news for local businesses, and perhaps makes it all the more important to hone their Google Maps presence.

"Drivers can then use their car maker’s turn-by-turn navigation system to be guided to their selected destination. With today’s additions, drivers can send destinations from Google Maps directly to their connected vehicles in 19 countries and more than 20 different brands," says Markus Mühlbauer, Engineering and Product Manager. "In the US alone, Send-To-Car is now available on more than 15 car brands and we hope to see even more partners join us soon."

"We think this is a great convenience for drivers – Prepare your route at your desk, send the destination to your car, and safely enjoy your ride – hands on the wheel, eyes on the road," he adds. "We also like to think that in the age of green driving, not having to print paper directions anymore is a great start of a green trip!"

Now imagine if Google gets Android into that many vehicles one day, and consider the potential for apps that cater to the driving experience. Also consider that app-making is getting simpler.

Unfortunately, no one’s connected any sales figures to the program just yet; things have been difficult to tabulate because many people may have concluded their purchases in dealerships after starting the process online.  And there are concerns that the effort simply wasn’t effective.

But Rob Chesney, the vice president of eBay Motors, said in a statement, "This program succeeded in driving awareness of eBay Motors as a destination for new vehicles.  It also confirmed our ability to innovate by building out a custom program that could quickly deliver a high volume of quality leads over a short period of time across multiple automotive brands."

Chesney said, as well, "Our partnership with GM continues on several fronts, including the sale of Certified Pre-Owned vehicles and we are exploring additional opportunities to partner on new car sales," which sounds encouraging.

We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for sales figures, or for more exciting developments like other automakers becoming involved or a nationwide rollout of the program.

gm.ebay.com launched on August 11th with the idea of getting eBay users to buy cars online.  This afternoon’s press release stated, "Since the beginning of the program through August 30 . . . nearly 4,000 new car buyers entered into negotiations online, over the phone and in person as a result of this promotion."

So eBay and GM are going to see what sort of things they can achieve by keeping the "Click and Buy" program running through September 30th, instead of September 8th as originally scheduled.

Then here’s the really interesting part: "At the conclusion of the California promotion, GM and eBay Motors will evaluate extending the program nationally, based on consumer demand and dealer feedback."

It still seems doubtful that lots of people are committing $20,000 or more on the basis of pictures on their computer screens.  But if the "Click and Buy" promotion can catch consumers’ eyes (see the "over the phone and in person" inclusion), there’s no reason to believe it won’t prove to be an effective form of advertising.

gm.ebay.com is scheduled to launch tomorrow and connect consumers to over 225 GM dealers.  Consumers should then be able to browse the dealers’ new car inventories, ask questions, and negotiate all of the financial details online.

Rob Chesney, the vice president of eBay Motors, explained in a statement, "Through this program, we are helping GM dealers to extend their physical showroom while at the same time delivering to our buyers the great deals and broad selection they expect from eBay."

It’s an interesting initiative, considering that most of the cars that are available online are used.  And although the initiative is indeed just an experiment, scheduled to run through September 8th and involving only California dealers, it’s easy to imagine that GM and eBay would see fit to expand it.

gm.ebay.com is by no means guaranteed to succeed, however.  People may hesitate to seal big deals on a computer screen, and to say that both eBay and GM have been experiencing problems lately would be an almost laughable understatement.

I was reading reports that General Motors is planning to offer Twitter capability for drivers who use the company’s OnStar security, communications, navigation and diagnostics system.

GM offers OnStar as a subscription service in the US and Canada for vehicles it sells in those markets that have the factory-installed OnStar equipment. The service currently has more than five million subscribers in North America (see the  Wikipedia entry if you want detailed information about OnStar).

According to a GearLive post yesterday – this story is an exclusive, they say – Twitter integration is coming to OnStar which you would use in the same way as you use OnStar to make or receive a cellular phone call – hands free and voice activated.

While in your vehicle, you can use OnStar to submit and retrieve tweets (messages) via your Twitter account. Using OnStar’s Voice-Activated Hands-Free Calling system, and having your voice converted into text, you can provide updates which would appear in the “What are you doing?” section of your Twitter homepage. It is also possible to listen to a tweet that was sent to you by someone else after it has been converted into voice. You can send and receive tweets without having to type or read anything.

You’ve been able to do something similar for quite a while now with TwitterFone – call in your tweets from your mobile phone and the service converts your voice recording into text and then tweets your message. Your voice recording is also available.

I’ve used that service and it’s pretty neat.

It’s amazing the imagination at work from so many people with so many products and services that work with Twitter.

The OnStar deal, if it is real, is another indicator of how mainstream Twitter has now become.

Is it an April Fool’s Day joke or the real deal? GearLive says it’s the real deal.

If Twitter and OnStar isn’t, I’d say it’s only a matter of time before someone offers something like this, somewhere.

Comments

Before I complain, I guess I have to say a bailout of the Big 3 seems necessary and suddenly fair. After all, the gov’t (Bush, Bernanke, Paulson) was more than willing to throw money, lots of it, even if we have to print it, no questions asked, no oversight required to their buddies in the banking industry–the same buddies whose greed caused the problem to begin with. The executives at the Big 3 placed their companies at the top of a giant Plinko board and let them fall to zero. In a real free market, they’d fail and be bought by some (likely Japanese) company that had some actual foresight regarding things like, I don’t know, how customers like quality, how you shouldn’t need more than a decade to prove you make quality products again, how in an increasingly costly energy environment it might be a good idea to focus on more fuel-efficient autos. Yet these executives act like they were blindsided and not at fault. And just as they go begging for money from Congress, they launch expensive ad campaigns on TV asking people to contact their legislators.

They’ve also taken their cause to the Web: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, asking people to support them.

Truth is we don’t have a lot of choice but to support these idiots. Not supporting them means lots and lots of American workers and communities suffer, which is why it’s so surprising the gov’t has been so reluctant. Seems like when a bailout could benefit the working class, suddenly socialism is just plain evil instead of being a necessary evil like when corrupt bankers take down the entire planet’s economy. I say let the gray-suit, short-sighted executive class fall into their self-generated greed-holes and learn what it’s like to make a living like the rest of us. I say secure those mortgages from the renegotiated bottom up, suspend property taxes, and let that money trickle up for a change. I say if we’re going socialist–are we really?–then go socialist where it counts, where it was meant to help, amongst the proletariat.

But then again, nobody’s put me in charge of anything, have they?

PS. Might want to actually level the playing field in Asia, especially Japan, where we still can’t export American cars.

What will also be historic to watch is how twenty-something cub Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg handles what appears to be economic Armageddon (as Jim Cramer prognosticated a year ago in his famous meltdown—the same guy telling you take your money out of the market now). Even more historic and interesting will be to compare how Zuckerberg handles it to how GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner does.

Early developments are pretty telling. Wagoner has taken his case to YouTube. In a two minute video, he spoke of innovation and new, more economically friendly cars down the pipe. He talked about gas prices and fuel economy and asked the YouTube audience for thoughtful commentary.

After 8,000 or so views there has been no commentary, but that’s beside the point. Wagoner’s video is kinda Iacocca-ish, which is probably what he was going for.

What sort of guidance can we expect from his quarter-life dotcom hotshot counterpoint? You might call it a cautious approach. Zuckerberg is set on nailing down a business model within the next three years.

Maybe that’s when his student loans come due?

In an interview for a German news site, Zuckerberg explains revenue for Facebook isn’t as important as growth at the moment:

“I don’t think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable. I’m pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today.”

Maybe Microsoft would like to take that quarter-billion it plunked down and put it toward buying up a failing bank. That seems to be a pretty popular move right now.

It’s still hard to believe Zuckerberg once blew off billion-dollar negotiations with Yahoo—pre-Microsoft bid and pre-tanking-stock Yahoo. Honestly, offer me a billion dollars for something. Anything. I’ll take it.  
 

GM managed to trounce second-place Toyota in one category; 62.4 million ad-exposed unique visitors hardly compare to a total of 102.6 million.  Also, GM’s delivery of 1.7 billion display ad views in the U.S. seems superior to Toyota’s 1.4 billion, and its share of voice (32.8 percent) is undeniably higher (Toyota took 26.4 percent).

 comScore Statistics

If GM’s plan works, sales of the Chevrolet Malibu will benefit from all these huge numbers; comScore found that four of the ten most common ads promoted this vehicle.  Frankly, the approach seems like a good idea, as inexpensive sedans have a wide appeal, and reviews of the new Malibu have been positive so far.

But if Toyota was beaten, it may only be because the Japanese company was trying to play a different game.  The focus of its ads was the Scion xB, which is aimed at a hip, younger crowd with its almost-entry-level price and bold styling.  And certain people saw more of Toyota’s ads, with it achieving a frequency of 21.7 per person (to GM’s 16.4) in January.

Unfortunately (who doesn’t like to look at gorgeous cars?), neither Lamborghini nor Aston Martin made comScore’s list.

GMnext is purportedly all about dialogue and buyer feedback, but in launching it, GM seems to have ignored existing sources of information.  The popular Corvette Forum has around 175,000 members, for example, and many other forums are dedicated to different models and brands.  GM could have sent representatives to them instead of starting its own community from scratch.

Looking forward, I’ll also note that there’s nothing new about the topics "Design," "Tech," and "Green" on GMnext, yet for some reason, having this fresh place to talk is supposed to result in huge changes.

Hopefully my reaction is a case of too much cynicism; few things would be nicer than seeing shipments of small, fast, fuel-efficient, and reliable cars appear on the lots of GM’s dealers.  This is just a website’s launch, however, and I’m not going to get too optimistic until that happens.