Just days after filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, General Motors launched a reinvention campaign, starting with this nationally aired commercial. They uploaded it to YouTube with the following quote:

GM is Changing. One Thing Isn’t, Our Commitment to the Customer.

From a marketing perspective GM is definitely in need of some brand management and reputation rebuilding. However, personally, I don’t know that the multi-million dollar television advertising campaign was the best use of their funds. I don’t disagree with the message, just the way the message was delivered. Both skeptics and fans are out there online right now – on social media sites like YouTube, forums, and blogs. They’re going to need to do a lot more than just project their message of reinvention on us, they need to engage with us, get our feedback, and build that into their company moving forward.

If they don’t start engaging soon more people like Alfred (YouTube username gmretardation) will come out with responses of their own. The GM video has received over 45,000 views in the past 5 days since it was uploaded and Alfred’s video is over 27,000 views in just 2 days with nearly a hundred comments. Ironically, GM disabled the use of comments for their video. Check out their spoof of the commercial below.

What do you think? Can GM pull through the bankruptcy, and if so, what do they need to do to command your wallet again?