General Motors’ combination formula

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Tuesday , May 13, 2008 at 0156 hrs General Motors Corp, which has long struggled to juggle eight brands ranging from mass market Chevrolet to high-end Hummer, announced plans to streamline its lineups in a move to simplify the organisation and create a more focused sales and marketing strategy.

As part of the shuffle, GM tapped former Nissan North America sales and marketing chief Mark McNabb to run the premium Cadillac, Hummer and Saab brands.

Under the strategy, instead of eight separately run brands, GM will have four sales channels each headed up by a general manager. Saturn and Chevrolet will each have their own channel. There will be a channel for the premium brands and one for Buick, Pontiac and GMC.

“This fulfills the strategy we have been on for a while,” said GM sales chief Mark LaNeve.

LaNeve met with GM’s sales and marketing employees and its dealer councils to discuss the changes. Having a large number of brands in the past has forced GM to hang on to overlapping or slow-selling products, along with the bureaucracy of managing each one.

In recent years, GM has worked to align its brands without eliminating entire lineups, an effort most visible in the consolidation of hundreds of stand-alone dealers. About half of all Hummer and Saab dealers already share a roof with a Cadillac store. And about 80% of Buick, Pontiac and GMC dealers have consolidated over the years.