Tweeting to sell cars
11:43 pm in status by Greg Krivicich
Auto Makers Turn to Social Media ‘Influencers’ to Drive Sales.
Car companies have long tapped high-profile celebrities to spread word of mouth about new cars by test driving them around town. Now they are turning to a similarly powerful but cheaper source: young social-media influencers who have strong online followings.
For its new compact Lexus, Toyota Motor Corp. is enlisting people with a strong following on Twitter and other social media to create buzz around its products.
Its new campaign includes online videos that show actress and comedian Whitney Cummings interviewing an array of social-media heavyweights as they take the Lexus CT 200h for a spin around their hometowns. The stars of the campaign include Baratunde Thurston, Web editor of satire website the Onion; Brian Solis, a marketing guru and social-media expert; and Richard Quitevis, or DJ Qbert, a well-known disc jockey.
“If we have people that are active in social media, then they can bring followers with them,” says Dave Nordstrom, Lexus’s vice president of marketing.
As social media become a growing force at generating attention, marketers are increasingly turning to the less famous to help them pitch products. Auto makers and ad executives say tapping social-media stars can give a brand more credibility with younger shoppers than hiring high-priced celebrities.
“People trust people like themselves, and when we can tap into these people, it will sound less like Ford tooting its own horn,” says Scott Monty, Ford Motor Co.’s global digital-communications manager.
Armed with images and video from their test drives, the stars of the Lexus campaign have been spreading the word by blogging, tweeting and posting images on Flickr. R&B singer Goapele tweeted: “I had a great time last night with @Djqbert @WhitneyCummings. Thanx to @keyinfluencer @VanHoven @lexus for a solid production. Go #Lexus1″
These social-media personalities will “propagate the message,” says Jonas Hallberg, co-founder of Skinny, the New York ad firm that helped craft the Lexus push.
Land Rover, seeking to promote a new small sport-utility vehicle, is currently conducting a marketing effort dubbed “Pulse of the City Project,” which entails getting celebrities and influencers behind the wheel of its Ranger Rover Evoque and having them track their daily journeys.
Ford is in the process of selecting 100 people who have strong followings on social media to test drive its new 2012 Focus around Madrid as part of a promotion dubbed “Ford Focus Global Test Drive.” BMW also is hiring social-media influencers to help promote its ActiveE, an electric vehicle coming to market in 2011.
The fees for such participants are a far cry from the millions that some celebrities get to push a product. For the Lexus campaign, some of the participants said they were paid basic Screen Actors Guild fees to be part of the ad push. (SAG says on-camera principal performers aren’t paid less than the minimum of $592.20 for an eight-hour day and in some cases will receive residual payments.) For the Ford campaign, the auto maker plans to award $10,000 to a charitable cause chosen by those taking part in the campaign.
Ford has already had some success with the marketing technique. Last year, it hired 100 young, Web-savvy drivers to get behind the wheel of its new Ford Fiesta subcompact and post their impressions on sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. The campaign, Mr. Monty says, generated over seven million views on YouTube and four million mentions about the “fiesta movement” on Twitter. As a result, 130,000 consumers went to a website and 83% were previously non-Ford owners, he adds.
Still, the gimmick isn’t without risk. Turning your brand over to individuals who often aren’t under contract to say positive things about your product could backfire with criticism. Moreover, the Federal Trade Commission is paying close attention to plugs being made in so-called nontraditional contexts, such as tweeting and blogging. Last year, it issued new guidelines saying that bloggers must disclose any compensation they receive in exchange for writing product reviews. It also said celebrities must disclose if they have a relationship with an advertiser when they endorse a product in social media.
Car makers doing these programs and participants say they have been careful to disclose that influencers are being paid or working on behalf of the auto makers.
“I am not contractually obligated to tweet positively,” says Mr. Solis, the social-media expert participating in the Lexus push. The company “only asked to disclose that I was paid to be part of the program.”
By SUZANNE VRANICA / Wall Street Journal
Twitter has grown from an interesting social media platform to a full-out revolution in news and opinions. What started with a relatively bland set of 140 character messages has grown into the preferred way for celebrities, musicians, and other “A-Listers” to broadcast their most recent news, pictures, and musings to the world. We’ve got athletes tweeting during games, reporters logging on in the midst of developing stories, and noted authorities carrying on long debates back and forth in short bursts.
