Michael Accardi 
By now it’s safe to say we’ve all seen the new GM logo unveiled earlier this month. It was the first major change to the iconically blue, big-lettered (if not a bit boring) logo since 1964, and it certainly churned up many opinions, most of them unsavory.
But perhaps the worst part of the entire saga is that the corporation just put the finishing touches on a multi-million dollar effort to rebrand GM Genuine Parts and Accessories, along with tuning up ACDelco parts packaging. GM-Trucks.com noticed that the new packaging rollout includes the now-defunct GM logo.
On December 9, 2020, literally one month before the new corporate logo was unveiled, General Motors Customer Care and Aftersales proudly unveiled the brand new GM Genuine Parts and ACDelco Parts packaging which was billed “as part of a broader effort to rebrand and strengthen GM Genuine Parts and ACDelco.”
It’s actually kind of funny how dissociated the December 2020 announcement is from the rest of GM’s core movements, as seen by the following quote:
“We’re executing a focused, disciplined strategy to improve our core business and position the company for future growth,” said John Roth, General Motors global vice president, Customer Care and Aftersales. “The rebrand is a result of extensive global research and will help ensure a consistent brand image, no matter the product or geographic location.”
“Rebrand,” indeed.
How is a statement like that supposed to be taken seriously, we’re expected to believe “extensive global research” didn’t also include some kind of knowledge that an entire corporate rebrand was incoming? And what part of rebranding your global aftermarket parts packaging with a logo set for the shredder helps ensure a consistent brand image? Or is it something even more absurd, like GM Customer Care and Aftersales knew the corporate rebrand was coming and decided to launch the new-look packaging anyway because the costs were already incurred?
Clearly, this has been in the works for a while. According to the December statement, the new branding and packaging began arriving in North America as early as fall 2020, and its planned rollout will continue throughout 2021 as the new packaging goes global.
Apparently, the all-new packaging is just the first of several activities planned for 2021 to bolster the market share of GM Genuine Parts and ACDelco, I wonder if another task has just been added to that list.
