Recently I have noticed more and more car brands trying out social media as a serious marketing tool. This is great, as the notoriously digital unfriendly SA car industry is starting to recognize the long term value social media offers to their brands.
What are Car Brands Doing on Social Media?
The goal of social media for car brands was discussed on iMod recently. As a high involvement, high cost purchase, a conversion would be a user booking a test drive. Social media as a “conversation with brands” also offers a new avenue for CRM.
A number of brands are active in the social media space, but not many seem to be truly leveraging their social real estate.
Below are the top 5 car brands on Facebook. Chevrolet is the only brand driving users to test drive while Mini is trying to keep the funky, lifestyle beat going with MiniTV being one of the default apps.
| Brand | Facebook URL | Fans |
| Audi | https://www.facebook.com/audisouthafrica | 45 024 |
| Chevrolet | https://www.facebook.com/chevroletsa | 38 442 |
| Kia | https://www.facebook.com/KiaMotorsSA | 32 042 |
| MINI | https://www.facebook.com/MINI.southafrica | 29 737 |
| Jeep | https://www.facebook.com/jeepsa | 28 016 |
The Twitter landscape is a mine-field for local brands. Car brands are all over. @ToyotaLive and @MiniSouthAfrica are the true success stories. Constantly active, Tweeting and commenting, both are run by external digital agencies – specialists in social media who can delegate people to run the accounts all day.
@BMW_SA is about to get an overhaul as they have just hired a new community manager, who will hopefully get some interaction on this account. Until the community manager joined, the account had been inactive since August 2011. The number of followers on what is a stagnant account shows just how powerful the brand loyalty to BMW is in South Africa.
The @RangeRoverSA and @NissanNavaraSA accounts confuse me. They are active, but appear to talk at people, rather than with them. It comes across as very rigid and not as a brand I would want to approach.
| Brand | Handle | Followers |
| BMW | @BMW_SA | 9 489 |
| Toyota | @ToyotaLive | 5 253 |
| MINI | @MINISouthAfrica | 4 492 |
| Nissan | @NissanNavaraSA | 3 248 |
| Range Rover | @rangeroversa | 3 174 |
Blogs
Some brands have ventured into the blogshpere. There does not seem to be much direction with this: brands are carpet bombing and not getting value for money.
Ford went through a stretch of handing out Rangers to almost anyone with a blog, while Mini actively approach lifestyle and car bloggers to promote vehicles during their launches.
These are two different approaches, and I think the Mini approach has more longevity. It is built around developing relationships with key influencers. Ford chose to go for total reach, even if the blogs posting content about their brand had little or no relevancy to the Ford Ranger.
The Failures
So, while some brands are winning at social media – to a degree – others are flailing around on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. On the blogsphere, brands are trying to engage bloggers to get content.
Some do it well – the VW Date Drive was a great campaign, where Volkswagen engaged a range of bloggers to promote the launch of the Polo GTi.
Mazda failed with their latest launch of the CX-5 compact SUV. The initial round of the launch hosted the usual group of journalists, but then a group of fashion bloggers were brought in. They were treated to 2 days of driving the CX-5 in the Cape Winelands as well as health spa experiences.
Of the 5 bloggers who took part, I can only find 1 review/blog post. It was badly written – surprisingly so, as the author is apparently an ex-journalist a journalist. I will give her grace, as cars are not something she usually writes about.
What I do have a gripe with is the public relations officer. Yes, the CX-5 is targeted at the ‘fashion mom’ demographic, but shouldn’t you chase for coverage, having hosted these people at a lovely hotel and spa?
Some ideas:
- Target car bloggers, or include car bloggers on the standard journalist loop
- If you are targeting niche topic bloggers, go ahead. But ensure their topics relate to your product/target market in an obvious manner.
- If bloggers don’t post about the experience you offered them, chase them for it. Be diplomatic, as bloggers are horribly egotistical. Most have day jobs, however, and just need a reminder.
I do think bloggers - car, lifestyle and niche bloggers included – have their place in the marketing mix. I do think that brands need to be bolder and approach bloggers. They also need to manage their social network properties better.
There is a lot of potential for bloggers and brands to build lasting relationships, offering online users a more original opinion on your products and promoting coversation around your brand.
Update
Leigh is a blogger and journalist (see her comment below). Yet again, as this was not sub-edited before I posted, it was badly communicated that I feel Leigh did her part and gave coverage to the brand having attended the launch, and the other bloggers did not.
There is also a 2nd post which I was not initially aware of, on Twisted Lifestyle.
In my opinion, car guys read car magazines. So by default, car guys would read online car reviews. I’ve never read a car review in my life, but I have read the blog you referred to. By inviting a spectrum of journos / bloggers to an event, Mazda has brilliantly widened their audience to include non-car people, like me.
It’s irrelevant whether the review is good or not, after all blogging is about a personal experience and all products have strengths and weaknesses. Mazda wasn’t looking for a good review, they wanted exposure – and got it.
The purpose of social media is to generate interest – and a variety of target markets are now talking about Mazda, not just car guys.
By writing this post and linking to LipGlossIsMyLife, you have inadvertently heightened the interest in, and increased the readership of a car review which may ordinarily have gotten lost on page 15 of a car magazine. You have personally generated more interest in Madza than you intended to. And that my good man, is the power of social media! Well done, you have just helped bring attention to a brand – without even getting a goodie bag or a stay-over in a hotel.
Your first statement about inviting a non-petrol head audience to attend a launch and generating interest is correct. I think its why brands are trying to engage bloggers.
I am not attacking Mazda, Mini, VW, BMW or Chevrolet in this post. I do think that Mazda have not gotten value for money with this exercise. Leigh went on the launch and Tweeted and blogged about it. Thats fine. SHe kept to the unofficial deal Mazda made with her.
The remaining bloggers on the launch did not cover it. Why? They enjoyed the champagne and the car for 2 days, but did not repay Mazda with a simple blog post. Having provided them with all this free stuff I think Mazda has the right to ask where their coverage is.
Hi Matt, I think we’re in total agreement then. It is a poor show that not everyone blogged about the experience. Gives the rest of us a bad name.
onward & upward.
C
“Mazda wasn’t looking for a good review, they wanted exposure – and got it.”
Sorry, but I have to disagree with that and I’ll tell you why, you’re welcome to disagree and I stand to be corrected, it’s just my opinion. I am a professional blogger and I have done blogging work for Mazda, Mini and a few other car brands so I’m talking from a little bit of experience.
I ran a backlink check, authority check and social Topsy check on the post Matt linked to, very very little happening in that regard. Matt has added a link and that’s awesome, but the people clicking through will more than likely just want to see why Matt felt it was bad and aren’t actually interested in Mazda at all – target audience fail. Further to this, the comments on the post show that the audience isn’t really interested in the car at all, which is unfortunate and certainly not the bloggers fault though.
I should just state that I have absolutely nothing against Leigh and her blog, I’ve read it a number of times and it’s cool! I’m more just interested in sharing my experience and why I agree with Matt about great reviews being crucial for brands.
Back to it: I’m not a brilliant writer and in the past I’ve been assisted by my copywriter to ensure that the brand I’m pushing is communicated in a powerful way. I struggle with getting the perfect words together, and a few simple changes can make all the difference and I think that’s where one brand will end up standing higher than another. I’ve looked at my stats for campaigns I’ve done for Mazda and Mini, and I can tell you that the posts/campaigns where I’ve taken my time to think about my audience and communicate the message properly, have out done those that were less targeted and more off the cuff by 10 fold, easily.
I think the important thing to realize here is that the World Wide Web is becoming far more a consumption tool and with the huge amount of information thrown at us, we move incredibly quickly around the Internet – if we come across something that isn’t well written or well executed, we dart on off to the next thing – I watch myself moving around the web, if I’m looking for something about an iPhone and I arrive on a site that doesn’t have a great breakdown, I click away immediately and often when I click away I end up going and doing something else – I believe that this is common with many World Wide Web users.
On top of that, I believe that in an industry such as cars, which is hugely competitive, ensuring that your brand is communicated well online is critical, this times into my previous paragraph, if you’re interested in buying a new car and come across something that doesn’t sell the car well, there’s a huge chance you’ll move onto the next type of car – our attention spans are getting less and less, and people don’t buy cars online, they buy them in person, so you need to hit that chance with everything you have, which means a perfectly executed campaign, you get that one shot, seize it.
OK, so that’s my little ramble – the irony, another comment on this post means another good chance in someone else coming and commenting as well, and in turn, more people will come, soon LipGlossIsMyLife will pike in traffic and Mazda’s sales will sky rocket – in all honesty, that would actually be super awesome and perhaps next time Mazda will hire Clouds, Matt, Leigh and myself to do a campaign and we’ll all write reviews which result in people complaining us and soon Mazda will be the leading brand online!
Hey Chris
The day I published that post (the 4th of June), it got 306 views alone. I usually get around 600 to 1000 hits a day so that’s a pretty good outing for a single post. And that’s just on the first day it was up. So sure, while I’m no 2Oceansvibe, it hurts my feelings when you say there’s ‘nothing’ going on there.
Otherwise, you’re right, not every woman who reads my review will be interested in the car, but hey, I’m not interested in every ad I see on TV. The important bit is that it’s out there to lurk around in your subconscious.
Still, I do agree with both you and Matt. Mazda should definitely chase the other bloggers. Personally, I don’t attend launches unless I plan on giving them coverage.
Hey Matt
A few corrections: I’m not an ‘ex’ journo; I write for an average of six mags a month. Also, it was a one night stay over and no spa experiences were involved.
Why did you think my write up was badly written? ‘Cos it wasn’t riddled with uber-boring technical details that my girlfriends and I totally don’t care about? Please remember that I write for my audience in a language and style they understand and connect with. Essentially, I’m talking to ‘superficial’ girls like me who buy a new car every few years but don’t really care about all the technical specs. (I know… I know… it seems so unfair that non-petrol heads like moi should have any buying power, but we do!)
All the best,
Leigh
P.S. I see Ross from Twisted Lifestyle (another blogger who attended the launch) put up his Mazda post up last week (http://www.twistedlifestyle.com/mazda-cx-5-soul-of-motion/) It’s much more impressive than mine in regards to how it details the car’s mechanics and what not which is probably why I didn’t manage to finish reading it. This doesn’t make it ‘badly written’; I’m simply not his target market, in the same way that you aren’t mine.
@Leigh: I can live without the technical speak. Telling your audience that the Mazda has either 114kW or 200Nm means nothing to them. References to SkyActiv technology are also lost on these users. (I had to look up what SkyActiv tech is. It’s properly complicated!)
The tone – the bouncy girl – suits your blog, but the spelling and grammar mistakes ruin the credibility of the post/publication. I think you know how fickle online users are regarding this!
When Chris says “not much going on there” he does not mean you had no traffic. He means that there are not many links and very little external engagement happening except for the comments we see on your page (including the 2 trolls *Spits on trolls* ). This external engament drives traffic to your site, and hopefully to Mazda’s site culminating in a test drive or a sale.
Sorry Leigh, I think you misunderstood me, when I said that not much was going on there, I was talking about back links and social mentions in relation to what @clouds said. I certainly didn’t mean it the way you took it!
Not a 2OceansVibe.. I’m pleased that you aren’t, it’s what keeps me reading your blog.
Thank you Chris. And sorry for being so ‘huffy’. It’s been a bit of a week. ;-P x x
WHAT?! I thought we were going to get into a proper debate and you’re knocking my spelling and grammar?! Good God!
In a fit of pique, I just ran my page through spell check and it tells me I haven’t made ANY! ‘Zexy’ is a word I use all the time. And any ‘slang’ (i.e. roadtrippy etc) is part of my ‘voice’.
Arrrgh!
Okay, I’m going to leave you alone now and get back to writing ‘fluff’ for my girls. Here’s hoping I don’t slip up and make any splling errs or I could wind up losing all my readers…
Pffft!
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Let us talk about car brands.Is audi has the largest number of fans?But i am not a audi fan.I think facebook survey may not be correct always