John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:

Brand Winner...	And Loser...

Winner: General Motors

Loser: Valedictorians

GM moves from the loser column to the winner’s column this week.

Why the shift?

Because last week we were looking at blunder with the name of the company (GM executives apparently wanted their people to replace the time-honored word “Chevy” with “Chevrolet”).  This blunder showed mistaken marketing thinking, but since the company has quickly back-tracked this will not prove a fatal marketing move. 

The more important marketing work became apparent over last week: the Chevy Volt.

When a newsmagazine like The Economist that never, ever, does car reviews decides that your car is worthy of a review and then gives it an unqualified gold star, you deserve recognition.  And that is exactly what has just happened with GM’s Chevy Volt, their ground-breaking electric car.

After all, people buy brands not companies and the Chevy Volt retailing at $30,000 after a government rebate and with performance and features that people will love (not to mention the thousands of dollars in annual fuel savings) has got the makings of a brand that the Target Market will embrace.  This is simply marketing at its best which means giving customers what they want, never what you think they want.

As The Economist points out, GM has been working steadily on the Volt, not to mention a widespread re-invention and strengthening of its many brands, for several years.  Don’t be distracted by the financial turmoil, GM is back and with the exception of the occasional mis-step, their marketing is being done from the ground up now.  Once again, it’s the brand that drives the company.  End of story.

Loser:

It’s graduation time in America, but this year a bad idea is gaining serious traction. I’m speaking about group valedictorians.  This year some high schools have up to thirty of them.  That’s right: thirty.  But they’re still all supposed to be Number One.

It used to be that schools would pick one top student –usually on academic criteria alone— and that person would have the honor of representing his or her class at graduation.

No more.  In a nod to the modern idea that everybody has to get some kind of trophy, many high schools are extending the honor to all its top students under the concept “if everybody wins, no one loses.” 

But what’s so bad about the threat of losing?  And, let’s be honest, losing itself can be an important part of an education. 

Sure, the fight to be valedictorian has in the past been a tough, even brutal, contest for top students, but what’s wrong with a tough contest?  What’s more important here is the idea of standards.  If you put everyone at the top, then the top becomes meaningless.  You might think that you’re saving people’s feelings but really you’re only depriving them of something to believe in and something to strive for. 

As a brand, then, it’s not surprising that being a valedictorian now means a lot less than it once did.  Admissions officers have admitted that they don’t really value the title anymore because it’s essentially meaningless.

Of course, this is part of a bigger trend of grade inflation that has seen both high school and college classes crammed with honors students –again, where’s the honor if everybody gets the honor? 

Ultimately, what is being diluted is not only the valedictorian brand but the academic brand.  This is obviously a disturbing trend, but for the schools –particularly at the college level-- that are smart and want to use this trend to their advantage, they’ll go the opposite direction and cultivate a reputation for tougher grading and competition with real, not imagined, stakes.  Those schools will start attracting the best and most competitive students who care about such things and are even motivated by them.  The schools that don’t will be left to struggle to figure out how many more trophies they need to hand out as their reputations slide.

Bottom line: if a term doesn’t have real meaning or value, people will eventually recognize that fact.

And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.