Investor Relations

In July 2009, the company filed for bankruptcy which undoubtedly lead to many turbulent changes in the company. The "old GM", or "General Motors Corporation" was bailed out by the government and is now considered the "new GM" or the "General Motors Company." Because of this, GM is no longer a publicly traded company. Under the "Investor Information" page on their website, GM has this webpage of FAQ's about the status of the company right now. The company does however post their annual SEC 10-K filings on their website, but considering it is no longer traded, there are no shareholders and therefore, no letter to the shareholders.

Instead of discussing how GM deals with their investors, I am going to look at how GM handled the bankruptcy of their company and what they did to overcome it. Analysts first thought that it would take GM at least 90 days to recover from bankruptcy, but in reality it only took 40 days. This was partially due to GM's PR people's very well executed "Reinvention" campaign.

The "reinvention" campaign launched a new website that incorporated all forms of social media with links, youtube videos, and blogs. The campaign spoke openly and honestly about the bankruptcy, which I personally think lead to it's success. People will always respect a company much more when they are able to fess up to their wrongdoings and speak candidly about what occurred. A good example of this is the 1986 Tylenol Johnson and Johnson incident. The company took complete blame for what happened, and they were able to recover much quickly than a company like Toyota who did not come forth as soon as bad news broke.

The "reinvention" campaign produced commercials and blog posts that pulled on consumers heartstrings about the hardworking individuals and the longstanding history of the company. Overall, the PR team at GM did the right thing is creating a campaign to change the face of GM and gain back customers trust and faith.