Uh … perhaps it’s not a good idea to so boldly put the name of a competitor’s car in your advertising …”Accord” is so big.  Do you have any idea what this car is?  Uh, …, Is a “compromise”  a bad thing? For me a compromise  is a win-win solution for all parties.  Wow … looking at this ad, I take away the Accord is a good value, maybe I should check it out.  It doesn’t help that the car’s styling is vanilla in the current style of the Accord and Camry …Wow …

And the second ad:

Uh … so is GM apologizing for the styling of this vehicle by implying it’s an “AppleCart?”  The redness of the vehicle reinforces this notion.  Yeah, yeah, we’re supposed to think the car “upset the apple cart” — so why not say that?  And call it an “AppleCart” instead of an “apple cart” makes me thing “AppleCart” is a brand name.  Wow … that’s something GM …wow…

Both of these ads suffer from mixed messaging that doesn’t reflect well on the GM brand, and, in the case of the Accord ad, may turn a potential customer to a competitor immediately.  I know the intention was to be ironic, but the mental and visual cues are doing the opposite of what may have been intended.

On top of killing the Saturn brand, it makes me wonder whether everything is okay at GM.