Editor? /? Tu Yanping

Design? /? Du? triumphant

Source? /? Nick's Autonews? surname

Audi ag never dreamed that their biggest public apology in 2020 had nothing to do with the "tailgate". Controversially, in May, in order to vigorously promote the new golf model, it released an advertising short film of the eighth generation Volkswagen Golf on Twitter and INS.

Volkswagen brand must apologize for a 10 second advertisement posted on Twitter and INS in May, which showed that a colored man was manipulated by a huge white man and was considered a racist.

In this 10 second short film, a colored person is bounced into a restaurant by the hand of a tall white woman in a "skull-bashing" posture. The name of this restaurant is "Petit? Colon "and" colon "mean colonists in French. Not only that, but the German word "DER" at the end of the video? NEUE？ The order of the letter "GOLF" just spelled out this notorious derogatory term to describe black people and hammered the racial discrimination of the public to death.

Although many netizens said that they didn't see any racial discrimination after watching it, the public insisted at first that it was maliciously misinterpreted by people with ulterior motives and refused to delete the video. But after all, the arm can't beat the thigh, and the public condemnation is so loud that the public has to withdraw the video and apologize publicly. The reputation of Golf 8 overseas has also been greatly affected. But this just shows that social media is still a minefield for car companies.

Social media is like a double-edged sword. If used properly, it has a strong ability to attract customers, but if used improperly, it will suffer heavy losses.

Social media is no longer just a remedy?

In 20 17-202 1 year, the capital investment of various industries in Germany in digital advertising was 1 100 million euros.

Although it is difficult to determine the specific amount of money spent by car companies on social media activities, before the outbreak, digital advertising spending was on the rise. Take German as an example. According to eMarketer.com's data, the expenditure of automobile companies on digital advertising has increased from 850 million euros (about 65.438 billion US dollars) in 2065.438+09 to 65.438+040 billion euros (about 65.438 billion US dollars). In Britain, this figure rose from 65.438+54 billion pounds to nearly 2 billion pounds in the same period.

BrandTotal, a marketing analysis agency, conducted a detailed study on American brands' spending on social media in 20 19 years, and found that there were different platform preferences for their funding. Take Toyota as an example, 62% of its social media budget is spent on Facebook, while Audi's preferred channel is YouTube, accounting for 54%. Ins is not very popular, but it still accounts for 40% of social media budget in the UK and finidi, and 39% of Porsche.

Only BMW spends a lot of budget on Twitter, accounting for 20%, and the rest of the car companies almost ignore Twitter, at least in terms of paid advertising. BrandTotal did not announce the specific amount, but there is no doubt that car companies are spending a lot of money.

"In the past, social media only played a role in fixing problems. Now, it is already the core of advertising planning. " DMS？ Media director Dan Strong (Dan? Strong) said, DMS? Media is a London-based organization that specializes in social media and cooperates with Toyota, Mazda and Honda.

A recent study conducted by BrandTotal on social media activities in Britain, the second largest automobile market in Europe, found that Renault was the most active on social media among automobile manufacturers in the first nine months of 2020.

Among the car brands, this French company has generated a 19% impression of paying (the number of times the advertisement was seen). Renault's preferred channel is Twitter, which accounts for almost half of the brand's paid advertisements. However, the brand with outstanding performance on British social media is Porsche, which has the highest video views, reaching 1.58 1 billion times, and the highest "popularity", that is, people interact in the form of likes or comments, reaching 7.02 million times.

Renault ranked second with 1.3 1 ten thousand video views, and Aston Martin ranked third with 1.2 1 ten thousand video views. Tesla ranks fourth in popularity, although it hardly places paid advertisements. With the advent of the Internet era, car companies can push tailor-made digital advertisements to target customers more accurately according to their browsing history, and social media provides a more direct way.

"Most people hold their mobile phones for most of the day, and social media provides a window for people to contact a person directly through their mobile phones." The strong theory of DMS. "Its greatest advantage is that you can get to know the specific group you want to talk to very specifically."

There are two types of social media used by car companies: profit (also known as organic) or payment. For example, earning refers to posting content on social media like ordinary users, hoping to get likes and comments. Payment refers to the use of data collected by social media companies to place advertisements for specific customer groups.

Twitter reds in car companies

Car companies have very different attitudes towards social media. For example, Tesla may be a car company that most people can quickly connect with social media, but according to BrandTotal's research, it didn't spend a penny on social media. Tesla has 6.5438+0.48 million followers on Twitter, but its money-making behavior is very few. Tesla only sent five tweets in August, and released a video on YouTube in September, which was the live broadcast of the recent "Battery Day" and received 2.8 million hits.

In addition, CEO Elon Musk (Elon? Musk) also forged his extroverted online personality on Twitter, so that in 20 18, after Musk announced that he had enough funds to privatize the company without evidence, the US Securities and Exchange Commission forced Musk's "Twitter? Sitter "(the person who helped him check Twitter) pre-approved his tweet.

The founder of Nicholas Treyvaud Milton (Treyvaud? Milton also used Twitter to promote his fledgling fuel cell truck company, advocating so-called progress and cracking down on opponents, often posting several articles a day.

His last tweet was published on September 10, after a short-selling company accused Nikolai of fraud. It ended heroically with "the coward fled and the leader left the battle". The more I break my head, the stronger I am. Milton stepped down on September 2 1 and deleted his Twitter account soon after.

Conservative traditional car companies

However, Musk and Milton are just one example. Although some brands like to create controversy, use "black?" Life? Sports such as "things" attract attention, but most car manufacturers are conservative.

"We don't want to do anything to follow suit. This is an easy mistake to make. The great risk of following suit is that you don't know where they will go. " Jens-Linus, director of social media at Polestar? Lundgren-Broadening Theory.

Instead, Polestar is using social media to build its popularity by telling stories about the development of new models, mainly using the picture-based Ins website. "The way we want is to educate, tell, entertain and inspire." Lundgren Wade said, "These are the four cornerstones that we must do through social media."

Lundgren Wade admits that entertainment is the most difficult of these four cornerstones. When the traditional marketing thinking is applied to a very different media, the problem comes.

"This is a very special way of communication." He said, "I want to say that most institutions and most organizations are generally unaware of these differences."

Automakers often outsource the popularity of social media to specialized agencies, which may create additional problems, said Brent Ellis, head of communication at Polestar Europe. Ellis) said.

"These creative organizations will come up with a lot of cool ideas. Before presenting them to the public, it brings together elements such as art and creativity, which excites everyone, and is often blindfolded, ignoring what people see this idea means to those who watch it. " He said, "A colored man was brushed lightly by a huge white hand. What does it mean to them when they see it? "

Volkswagen's advertisement was produced by Voltage, a subsidiary of Berlin Hongmeng Group, but in the review of the golf event, the company concluded that more people needed to review the content internally before it was released.

"There are too many omissions in this process." You Ergen Stackman (Juergen? Stackmann) said that before the golf incident, he had been the sales and marketing director of Volkswagen brand. Stackman made the above comments in an interview published on the mass media website in June.

Volkswagen promised to set up approval checkpoints in and around the organization, although he said that about 200 people from the group and the organization would review golf content before it was released.

Volkswagen said that the problem is that everyone involved is too familiar with the content to evaluate it correctly. In order to make up for this problem, automakers will establish an external review of content and establish a "social media-like organization" to avoid similar mistakes.

However, the disadvantage of having multiple people censor social media content is that the final product may be seriously out of touch with the public and the world.

A typical example is an Ins released by Chrysler in August. Women use Pacifica? Minivan's car vacuum cleaner cleans the raspberry spilled in the trunk, and a fruit stall is clearly visible behind it, which is enough to show that this raspberry has just been bought.

Chrysler posted pictures on Ins.

For Chrysler's 654.38+200,000 Ins fans, it is ridiculous to vacuum out fresh raspberries from the clean trunk. "Who is so rich, bought raspberries like nothing happened with a vacuum cleaner? Chrysler, you pay your marketing team too much. " Someone commented. You know, raspberries are very expensive abroad.

We don't know how the advertisement came from, but in the view of a public relations executive, this is a typical case of customer-institution mismatch.

"I bet this result comes from this. The original idea was that a father was cleaning up the dog's vomit and the ground MaiQuan, but the customer asked for further beautification of the trunk space, showing the size of the trunk and the luxurious carpet, and finally set this picture. " An executive working in a global agent in London said.

Global risk

Another headache for automakers is the globalization of social media. What may be acceptable in one area may cause trouble if most viewers in other areas think it is unacceptable.

For example, Pavlac, the head of Ford in Poland (Piotr? Pawlak) recently posted a Qvanxian Zhang cougar on Twitter? ST？ A picture of a country SUV, in which a girl wears a short skirt. This tweet gained attention all over Europe, leading to comments such as "The model standing next to the car in 2020 makes me sick".

Tweets and pictures of Ford's Polish head

"What happened in Poland will not stay in Poland." Tim Holmes (Tim? Holmes) said on Twitter that he borrowed the slogan of Las Vegas, "What happens in Las Vegas, please stay in Las Vegas". Pavlac has deleted his Twitter.

Also in this year, Volkswagen was forced to sever relations with a dealer in Mexico, because there was a picture circulating on Twitter, in which the dealer's shop hung a photo of the Hitler-era Beetle car attending the Nazi rally.

The differences in social media content are not only between countries. Twitter users have recently been divided on whether Audi's August content is appropriate. The post shows a young girl wearing sunglasses eating bananas against the grille of a red Audi RS4. "Make your heart beat faster-in every way." The title reads like this.

Audi's tweet with pictures

Some people think that this is just a beautiful picture, while others condemn it as an open sexual suggestion. Audi deleted the post and apologized for using so-called "indecent pictures".

Facebook machine science?

The dispersion of social media users may explain why car manufacturer accounts with millions of fans on platforms such as Ins are relatively quiet. On the contrary, car companies are also more inclined to targeted social activities aimed at target users, which is the so-called hidden advertising.

"In the beginning, everyone was pursuing the number of fans on social media. It's hotter now. " Free social media and communication expert Ian Tokin (Ian? Tonkin) said

Social media platforms have accumulated users' information, which enables them to lock users through paid media. "Data is the key," Tolkien said. "If you can see who is involved, what kind of people they belong to, what kind of geographical area they live in, what interests they have, and study the details in depth, it will be easier to sell products to these people."

Facebook is the platform most closely related to target marketing, based on what it calls machine learning. "Machine learning means that the budget can be allocated where there is demand." Geraldine Ingham (Gerald? Ingham) said. He is the global head of Facebook car company.

Ingham said that Facebook's knowledge of users enabled it to expand its network and target potential customers that are currently ignored by automakers.

"Car brands have spent years perfecting specific portraits of customers and defining typical consumers who may drive each model according to previous customers." Ingham, who joined Facebook from Volkswagen, said, "They should aim at this niche on our platform. However, now that machine learning is very mature, they should have the confidence to give these materials. "

Facebook's algorithm means that automakers can advertise more widely among the 3 billion active users claimed by the platform, and these advertisements are still aimed at those users who are most likely to participate in the information.

Facebook claims that this makes the platform more useful, even though its marketing budget has been cut and its revenue has declined. "They really need to show their return on investment and adapt to a world where people are living, working and shopping more and more online." Ingham said.

Online activities provided by Facebook include virtual exhibition halls, live car conferences and screen information. Companies with strong Facebook influence, such as Audi, provide users with direct message interaction with distributors all over Europe.

"Even if the store is closed, car dealers can still continue to talk to customers, provide services, test drive and finance." ? Ingham said. However, Facebook's huge scale and strength have brought hidden dangers to itself. In July, Ford, Volkswagen and Honda all vowed to stop Facebook's paid advertising within 30 days.

At the same time, Facebook collects user data to place advertisements. If it finally violates the privacy laws in this region, especially GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), it may be censored in Europe.

At the same time, automakers also invest in specific social media platforms from the side. Daimler 20 19 paid 25 million pounds to buy shares in carwow.com, an online service that connects buyers and dealers, and it also bought shares in a website that can interact with users through YouTube's new car evaluation video. Carwow.com, which operates in Britain, Germany and the West, announced in May this year that its video views reached 654.38 billion times.

"Carwow is both a car hypermarket and a social network." The strong theory of DMS. Those who think they have found the right way to attract customers on social media are doomed to be eliminated with the change of public taste and the change of platform usage rules. Simple local popularity may face embarrassment in the global market, while global content may make the public collectively blind.

"Companies are getting to know it better, but no one can be called a social media expert." Tokin, a communication consultant, said, "You published something you thought was good, but it didn't gain much popularity. Two minutes later, you sent a video of a cat, but it was on fire. "

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.