Why GM needs more stories and fewer stats to sell its case for aid.

All well and good, but this is a crisis. The company hasn’t pivoted from this celebration of muscle and history to rally the audience behind the company. In fact, there’s a bit of mixed messaging when you compare GM’s social media outreach with its public pleas. You’re likely to stumble upon the image of a gleaming, guzzling Camaro on their “FastLane” blog; in one video, GM Vice Chairman (and climate-change denier) Bob Lutz brags about the new “luster and radiance of our paint jobs.” CEO Rick Wagoner soberly lays out “The Case for GM,” but only 20,000 viewers have tuned in. Hearing from workers directly on how they took a painful pay cut to keep their company viable? You won’t find that here.

Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, hasn’t worked with GM but has helped a number of Democrats build online communities. He thinks it’s a bit too late to mobilize a new community amid a crisis. But he told The Big Money the company could still personalize its communications operation—from the CEO admitting to mistakes and offering to recapture the spirit of American manufacturing to videos showing workers and communities facing a downturn. GM could even look within for a model, Gensemer said. The Saturn campaign of the early 1990s carried through on its pledge to “create a different kind of car company” by using separate management, showrooms, and workers—all of which could help create a community around a brand.

The raw material for an emotional connection is there, even if it’s simply because auto workers are likely to conjure more positive feelings in many than bankers. Some remember the role of auto workers in the civil rights movement. A GM Wiki set up in its centennial has had 72,000 people make contributions or edits, according to Barger—not bad for a company-generated network. Dip in to hear stories with complex, emotional content from this pioneering woman on the line or this newspaper deliveryman who loved his Corvette. The UAW does better, with its “I am the UAW” site showing self-generated videos of workers getting involved in their communities. If GM and the industry put stories like this one out on the transom, it would ground the history and clear the fog of data.