It’s been about a decade since GM last changed its logo, but this update represents the most drastic redesign in the company’s 113-year history. The most obvious change is the use of lowercase “gm” instead of uppercase letters in the logo. The underline only remains on the letter “m”, which symbolizes the batteries and the Ultrium platform for electric vehicles (the space inside the letter also resembles an electric plug). The blue square is rounded at the corners, so the logo is associated with a smartphone app.

“This is only the fifth logo change in 113 years, ” GM Marketing Director Deborah Wahl said in a meeting with reporters on Friday. ” And, probably, the most progressive thing that we have done since 1964.” The new marketing campaign will highlight GM’s shift to electric vehicles. And Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian journalist and author of The Tipping Point, became a spokesman for the automaker.

As the parent company to a family of car brands, the GM logo isn’t as recognizable as some of its competitors like Ford or Tesla. And the new logo won’t appear on any of the company’s new electric vehicles, from the Cadillac Lyriq to the GMC Hummer EV. Thus, the marketing campaign aims to communicate the company’s overall commitment to electrification, rather than increasing sales of a single brand.

GM is trying to convince investors of its commitment to electric vehicles. The company recently pledged to spend $ 27 billion on electric and autonomous vehicles by 2025, up from the $ 20 billion it had planned before the COVID-19 pandemic. GM also said it would launch 30 new electric vehicles worldwide, more than two-thirds of which will be available in North America.

GM unveiled two new electric vehicles in 2020: the Cadillac Lyriq SUV, which is expected to be produced in late 2022, and the GMC Hummer EV, slated for release in late 2021. But the auto giant was criticized for being too late to bring electric cars to market. The next will be two new versions of the Chevrolet Bolt, a mass-market electric vehicle that has been on sale since 2017. Production is expected to begin in the summer of 2021. GM also said it would release an electric Chevrolet pickup with a range of up to 640 km.

The new ad campaign, in which Mr Gladwell and a group of other contributors proclaimed the “inclusiveness” of EVs, is a far cry from GM’s first EV ad in 1995. The ill-fated EV1 was the company’s first electric car, but then the project was cancelled due to a series of corporate decisions.