Can you guess which of the GM stable of brands appears on the Business Week list of top 100 global brands?

Give up?

Cadillac? Nope. Chevy then? Uh-uh. Buick? Gimme a break.

The answer, and hopefully it’s obvious by now, is none. A big fat zero. Which is just where they are right now – zero, back to square one. Even GM’s supposed “power brand”, Chevrolet, and the re-introduction of the Camaro, hasn’t helped. As a typical old-school, product driven organization, GM was more concerned with developing new product lines but never put the effort into developing the brands under which those product lines would fall.

As a result, no one knows what they’re buying into when they buy a GM product. Is it performance? Is is service? Is it reliability? Is it affordable design? No one knows. Well, maybe President Obama knows something we don’t know. He just bought the company.

Maybe he’s just hoping to snag a Camaro without the outrageous price tag…

Oh, and just to be fair, can you guess which of GM’s competitors appear on the list? All of them. The usual suspects: Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche and Ferrari – the brands you’d expect because, well, they’re actually brands and you know what each of them stands for and the type of products, quality and service you’d expect from each. But also on the list are: Ford (just barely, but it’s there thanks to trucks), Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen.

So where are you? Are you building a brand or are you building products?

Will Obama come to your rescue when your fate has been aligned with GMs? Doubtful.