Video Recap of Geneva Auto Show Social Media Activations

I woke up this morning to a pitch on my twitter account.  Unlike most 'hey can you post this on your blog,' requests this one is pretty good.  There are some good examples of social media activations happening at the Auto Show including uses from Nissan, Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz. There's even a little dig at Citroen who allows for email sharing only on a build application they have on the floor.

Anyway, thanks to Patrick Sweeney for some good content.

Oh and here's the pitch (and yes I'm following @PJSweeney now on Twitter.

Honda Advertises on the Associate Press Twitter Feed

There was an interesting revenue tactic last week by the Associated Press when technology company Samsung advertised on the AP's twitter feed during CES.  AdWeek immediately covered the story, since there is some discussion about AP blurring the line of between "editorial church and state."

Another week and another big industry event, this time the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit and sure enough the AP's Twitter account is again posting sponsored tweets this time for Honda and Acura. Both posts featured the upcoming concepts the brands were featuring to interest AP's 1.5 million twitter followers.

This is an interesting tactic since one can assume a lot of media from other publications follow AP on Twitter.  If a brand can get their news to journalists in a quick way through what could be seen as a target media buy to a difficult to reach audience - reporters, this may not be all that bad of a tactic. Unless it backfires as crossing some line as some commenters on Twitter have expressed.

What will be telling is how long this lasts.  It could be seen by Twitter as a challenge to their own advertising model.  If Twitter accounts start selling their tweets directly to brands, this could usurp some ad dollars from the company providing the community and with a looming Twitter IPO on the way this probably won't last long.

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If you want to hear some more on this topic, checkout this week's BeanCast Marketing podcast that I was a panel member on. We discuss this topic in depth as well as several other current marketing and social media topics.

Infographic Your Superfan Status with BMW

Ever wonder how you rank with a brand's "official superfan" on Facebook?  Yeah me neither.  Regardless, BMW brings its fans the opportunity, through a Facebook data generated personal infographic, to see how superfan they are.

The BMW Infographic application showcases several key stats for their Facebook fan page including the most viral post, most popular video, and a tag cloud showing popular words used by fans: Love, Nice and Awesome top the list.

The application entices fans to create their own infographic to see how they rank against Todor Todorov, someone the BMW social media team has identified as the "Official BMW Superfan." At the end of the personal generated infographic fans can see how they score against Todor. I wasn't too far from making superfan status generating a score of 217 vs Todor's 295. If only I liked more International pages or liked a few more BMW posts, superfan status could be mine!

What the infographic does well is give fans a desire to become more engaged fans.  The whole idea of making it a bit competitive is to show how fans can be more engaged with BMW by liking more BMW fan pages and showing how engaged a person is with BMW content on Facebook. More engagement equals higher scores.

There are a couple misses though with the application. First of all, one can only share the application as a shared link that brings others to a person's created infographic on the application tab.  It seems an image of the infographic would've been a better solution, especially since mobile still lacks support for Facebook tabs and you get comments like the one I received from a friend, "Link didn't work for me." Also if the generated infographic was an image, it could be shared on other websites, social sites, or email.

Unfortunately, the infographic doesn't have a similar viral impact of say Intel's Museum of Me which did some similar things; though, to be fair, the Intel idea requires significantly more budget to do. Intel created a personal video that brought people's Facebook content into a museum like walkthrough.  Perhaps a personal museum of BMW content shared by the person and their friends could showcase interaction with the brand in a more interesting way than an infographic.

Overall the idea here is a good one and it's great when brands use their fans' Facebook content in a way that relates past interaction in a way that tells a story.

Try it out at: BMW Infographic Application

Rapping White Parents are Viral Video Gold

I loved Toyota's Swagger Wagon when it came out back in 2010. It provided some much needed entertainment in the difficult minivan space where a lot of buyers felt they had to defend their purchase of a minivan against a slew of cooler SUVs.

That was almost 3 years ago and it's been awhile since we have had an automaker try the formula:

Parent(s) + Kids in diapers + Toys + Car + Casio Keyboard Synthesizer + Rap = Viral Video Gold

The parent rapping formula definitely works, Toyota's video has over 11 million views. Then there is a recent addition from the comedy team Bluefish TV that has over 1.6 million views.


Fiat decided to enter this genre and has netted near a million views already; though, it's unclear how much media is behind the success.

"Word to all the mothers out there. This one goes out to you..." reads the YouTube video's description.

It is what you expect a lot of hang wagging, complaints about spit up, rhymes about life before being a mom, a mention of snot, and an attractive upper-middle class mom doing the simplest rap tempo.



The ad, called "The Motherhood", promotes the British release of the Fiat 500L a car we cannot currently get in the States.  If you are familiar with automotive naming, you can quickly figure this is a Fiat 500 "Large" basically Fiat's answer to the MINI Countryman. It made it's debut a few weeks ago at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

I'm sure the 500L rap video will continue to gain views. Sadly this formula works. Fortunately, the world is ending tomorrow and with it hopefully the end of rapping white parents complaining about their trials raising kids. It was a creative and fun idea once. The copycats have been painful. Here, here to the Mayan Apocalypse!

Random Acts of Comments

Social media ad buys are kind of crazy.  Take in point this ad for the new Ford Fusion Random Acts of Fusion campaign from Ford that showed up in my Facebook Home page newsfeed.

It has a visually interesting video still image of the actress Kate Micucci. How is her last name pronounced? I tried to say it to my wife and got slapped. Personally I had no idea who she was, but that says more about my lack of TV watching than it does about the choice to use her in the automotive ad.  It's more interesting to use a celebrity, especially an attractive one than always going with another beauty shot of a car.

What's interesting though is what happens with the ad's engagement.  Do people like it for the car, the brand, or the actress? Based on the comments it is highly likely the ad gets its engagement less from being automotive than being cute celebrity content.

However that really doesn't matter in the end, because people engaged with the brand in some way today that probably would have never happened if it wasn't for the nice photo of Kate and bonus if they clicked the video to see what she had to say.

Obviously the focus here is generating awareness for the campaign to people who probably are not car people. What do you think? Does it matter what generates a like or a comment on an ad?

If You're Going to get Caught, It's Best to have a BMW

It helps to have a new 3-Series after getting caught doing a little backside slap in the rear... camera.  No car I owned during high school had a Roundel or a backup camera so I was pretty safe from getting caught making obscene gestures as I returned to the driver's side of my 1978 baby-shit brown Ford Granada.  Here BMW has a little fun with technology and youth.   It's a simple idea of connecting something we all have experienced, the excitement and possibility of scoring when on a prom date. Of course, the target BMW 3-Series customer isn't likely attending a prom, other than as a chaperone, but who cares. What matters is we can all relate and appreciate the ridiculous situations technology now puts us in.

Confusing Your Models

This is a new one.

Model Carolyn Giles is suing Volvo after the company supposedly ran some ad units on an Australian dating website inviting singles to "spend a night with the Swedish model of your choice."

The issue with the ad has a lot to do with the double meaning of 'model.' Unfortunately, the copywriter's play on words is bringing Volvo into court..

The misleading copy of 'model' is now a $23 million lawsuit Giles has filed against Volvo, Hertz and her modeling agency. It's doubtful the damages are anywhere near that significance.  Regardless, it is a good lesson in ad copy and media buying.

Sure a good play on words can grab the site visitor's attention just make sure you still respect the integrity of your talent.

Source: [Dailymail]