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Toronto: General Motors is taking a page from Barack Obama's book.
Fed up with what it sees as unfair and inaccurate criticism, the beleaguered Detroit carmaker launched a website yesterday that is designed, in its words, "to make a distinction between the facts and rumours surrounding the company".
The Obama campaign has made a spirited online effort to counter tactics such as the infamous "Swift Boat" advertisements that helped sink John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in the 2004 US presidential election.
The GM website, named gmfactsandfiction.com, tackles such "myths" as "GM is looking for a government bailout"; "GM still doesn't make cars that people want to buy"; and, "GM vehicles are not as fuel efficient as comparable imports".
Each myth is followed by a snappy rebuttal written by GM's public relations staff. The website invites readers to submit issues they have read or heard about "so that we can have an opportunity to address it".
Strategy
Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman, acknowledged that the site breaks the old public-relations rule of never repeating the negative. But, he said, "We're trying to take some risks with our internet strategy. We've found that the travails of the auto industry have spread beyond the business pages to the general media. Bloggers and others tend to pick up misinformation and recycle it endlessly."
GM has seen a steady erosion of market share over the past decade as it has lost ground to Toyota and other foreign carmakers. It has racked up losses of $67 billion in the past three years.
Peter DeLorenzo, who runs the Autoextremist blog and is a frequent critic of the Detroit industry, applauded the move.
"GM and Ford desperately need to reach consumers any way they can," he said. "The hype marketing and touchy-feely advertising campaigns aren't resonating with the American consumer, and the overwhelming belief that Detroit automobiles are second-rate and not worth considering is still prevalent."
Mr Wilkinson said that "the hard-core naysayers we can't do anything about, but there are a lot of people in the middle we can have some impact on".
GM is especially targeting young people, whose views of the company are likely to be less entrenched than older car buyers.
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