Get My Volt. How?

So I was listening to Chevy's Volt pricing announcment and noticed Joel Ewanick, General Motors' vice president for North American marketing, was promoting a new website for the Volt using the web address: http://www.getmyvolt.com. So I tried it to see how I could get my Volt. Unfortunately, it just took me, after two redirects, to the Volt landing page on Chevrolet.com site that has been up for months with no calls to action to order a Volt (the image above is where I was landed.) Too bad, I was hoping to see how the effort differed from Nissan's Leaf pre-order website that was very clear in how to order their electric vehicle offering.

As part of the pricing announcement, Chevy hosted a Q&A where Chevrolet Volt marketing director Tony DiSalle and Volt vehicle line director Tony Posawatz shared some answers to questions mainly around availability and the ordering process.

UPDATE: They added a green button sometime yesterday to start the process with a dealer in certain markets where the Volt will launch, but I checked back this morning
and it's gone.

Can't Buy a Kia Soul? At Least Get a T-Shirt

So you love the cute hamster ads Kia has been rolling out for the Kia Soul campaign, but you don't have $15,000 to buy a car to show that love. Well, Kia now has a solution - Hamstar! Hamstar is the campaign interpreted into cotton t-shirts with a hip outline of a hamster head.

I really love how Kia has owned this campaign by demonstrating several ways to engage with their younger fans. Whether it was the tour promotion, Facebook game, or the Moochie YouTube video series, Kia has kept their presence high as it targets the youth market.

Now if only someone can tell me why Hamstar needs a Twitter feed? @HamstarClothing is up and well doing nothing since a few promotional tweets and announcing to all 24 followers that the store is live; it's last tweet on July 21st. Oh well, I guess this helped check the "social" box on the marketing campaign project list.

Still, I really like the idea of adding a line of clothing to help further the campaign; though, one wonders if too much will make Kia "the hamster car maker"?

Saab Soft Launches 9-5 Via iTunes AppStore

In iPhone and iPad application news, Saab released a new app for the launch of the 9-5. I believe this is Saab's first application on either platform and unfortunately it's not much of an effort.

The application merely mimics the content from their website where feature pages, a 360, an image gallery, and intro video are provided as content in the app. There is nothing more than the reuse of existing content repackaged for an application. It's very similar to what Mercedes did for the C63 AMG two-years ago.

I personally would've like to have seen some handraiser implementation within the application so the company could engage further with the app's users provided of course they are not disappointed after downloading something they basically could have seen on their iPhone or iPad's web browser.

Oh well, hopefully we'll see some more interesting things as Saab gets ready to spend big for their "Change Perspective" 9-5 launch.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: June 2010

Well after a fairly mild, ho-hum couple months life is heating up on the automotive brand fan pages with several companies upping their marketing on the site and a lot of double digital month-over-month growth from several brands in June.

The big battle of fans was last month’s BMW vs. Audi battle royal. It seems both brands answered the challenge by working hard to get new fans. BMW had a staggering 36% increase in fans which is an insane growth percentage from a brand with already the highest numbers of major automotive fans on the social media site. They added 244,181 fans in one month!

Audi did very well too with a 16% growth rate and 103,255 fans added in June. That’s almost the total amount of Toyota Facebook fans; 107,389 fans to be exact.


I’m still trying to figure out what BMW and Audi did to drive so many “Likes” in one month. My guess is outreach to owners through Become a Fan messaging and some social media marketing on Facebook, but I can’t confirm either.

Toyota did a lot of marketing on Facebook this month, but they didn’t do it to drive people to the Toyota fan page; instead, they took users to their Toyota Safety landing page where they are working on their safety perception issue after many recalls.

Lexus had its own Facebook goals where they drove consumers to their Facebook fan page by enticing them with the new halo vehicle advertisement for the new LFA super car. The message must be getting through as my own father in-law, not a car guy at all, started asking me about the LFA one day on a Home Depot run; though, he saw the ad on television.

Honda reignited their love machine this month by running Facebook ads for their Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda Facebook application and they even did a Father’s Day ad that tied in that Day’s message with Honda’s own campaign message (sorry I had a screenshot of the ad but must not have saved it.)


Mini and Infinti both had big jumps in fans with 32% and 43% gains respectively. Infiniti ran a campaign promoting their Cirque du Soleil contest that brought users to a Facebook tab promoting the contest. Meanwhile, Mini had its fun challenging Porsche to a race.

The Mini vs. Porsche effort definitely spawned some major engagement with its fans that mostly loved the idea of challenging the all mighty Porsche 911.

It certainly was a crazy June on Facebook. I’m curious what July will bring.


UPDATE: Thanks to one of my new Twitter followers @ChrisBrashear it seems Audi ran a photo upload contest in June which I'm sure was supported with some ad dollars on the site too.

Toyota Goes Digital to Market Safety Perception Gap

Toyota is in a real tailspin lately after countless recalls and the latest JD Power Quality Rating that gave the automaker a terrifying drop from 6th to 21st place out of 33 brands. Some industry pundits feel Toyota has enjoyed a leisurely advantage from their customers’ perception of strong quality over the years while in reality it has been deteriorating. A recent episode of Autoline After Hours had host John McElroy commenting on how all of the news is finally showing some of the chinks in Toyota’s quality armor that many consumers have known this for years. (As a side note: If you like this blog, you'll love Autoline After Hours it is by far the best Auto Industry podcast. I highly recommend it for weekly viewing.)

Whatever the case with Toyota’s real or perceived quality and safety issues are they have launched a major digital media campaign to respond to the safety issue.

The initial response was Toyota’s Recall landing page, but now they are moving to a strategic response around “Toyota Safety”. The online ads are directing people to the new safety site that communicates some of Toyota’s efforts around building safe cars. They feature their IIHS Top Safety Pick ratings, their SMART Teams who conduct rapid on-site analysis of issues, and their TV spots (online video) feature safety engineers and families that trust the brand. “At Toyota, we’re currently investing one million dollars an hour to enhance the safety and technology of our vehicles.”

Toyota has even branded their five safety features under the “Star Safety System” which is now standard on all their vehicles. What is the system? It’s traction control, stability control, anti-lock brakes, electronic brake distribution, and brake assist.

The latest ad buy was one recently used by Chevrolet on Yahoo! Mail that uses a background look to the mail login page (see image at left.) They are also buying several key placements on Facebook to get the message out.

I really like Toyota’s Safety landing page. It provides four clear messages with some well-executed online video explaining the company’s commitment and seriousness about responding to their safety perception issue. After months of news stories reporting unattended accelerating vehicles --some true and some alleged hoaxes -- the company needs to show they make safe vehicles.

The question now is will we see a Toyota Quality landing page after their plunging JD Power Quality rating? If one types in http://www.toyota.com/quality the page is redirected to http://www.toyota.com/productleadership/#/Precision. This page does not look like it is ready for prime time as a destination for online media, but that could easily change if Toyota uses the same formula they have for the Safety and Recall landing pages.

Can We Please Permanently Getaway from Flash Mobs

Flash mob MINI - l'attraversamento più lungo della storia! from Alice Coppola on Vimeo.

Mini Italy proves we all need to getaway from doing any more flash mobs. There is a Countryman Italian site the flash mob is promoting: http://getaway.mini.it.

P.S. - Sorry about Mini being the subject of the 3 of my last 4 blog posts.

Mini Trains to Upset Porsche's Piece of Iron

Okay, I'm allowed to be wrong. Right? Well in the case of Mini vs Porsche I'm now a fan of what this marketing mayhem has become especially with the latest piece that pits Porsche as Ivan Drago and Mini as underdog Rocky Balboa.

The best part of this execution is how Mini launched the "Mini Rocky IV" video on the video comedy site Funny or Die. The page is surrounded with ad units promoting Mini's event to race Porsche and to add to the consumer interest Mini is looking for someone to drive a Porsche Carrera S against a Mini Cooper S.

Mini Rocky IV - watch more funny videos

So I'll admit it. The Mini vs Porsche campaign is getting interesting and is generating a lot of dialog amongst fans from both brands and other auto enthusiasts. It's fun and getting really absurd, in a good way.

Just like Apple, never bet against Mini.