Mindshare Media News

Are you measuring what's important?

We often talk about social media ROI being measured differently. These are different behaviors and we should be applying new and different measurement standards, right? One of my favorite demonstrations of this is K.D. Paine's legendary acronymn HITS = How Idiots Track Success.

Your car and the cloud

TJ is a research engineer at the Ford Motor Company’s Infotronics Research and Advanced Engineering organization in Dearborn, Mich. His research interests lie in mobile computing and secure, privacy-preserving vehicular software architectures. His recent work involves architecting research software platforms to enable third-party software development on cars. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He was interviewed for Headlightblog.com by Kyle Outlaw, a regular contributor and UX lead at Razorfish who is also one of the agency’s subject matter experts on mobile.

Continue reading 'Your car and the cloud' interview by Kyle Outlaw on Headlightblog.com

The iPad: ten reasons why 'feet up' technology is the next big thing

EHS 4D Digital managing director Craig Walmsley puts the iPad through its paces and explains why Apple's new device isn't the saviour of print, it's the evolution of digital. After all the pre-show hype about the new tablet computer from Apple, the reality revealed at the launch event seemed a distinct let down.

How Toyota Helped Digg Itself Out of Trouble

In late January, Toyota watched the hundreds of stories about its recall situation flow through Digg and saw the passionate comments and conversations triggered by those stories. Toyota was already an advertiser on the user-voted news aggregator, but execs at the company concluded that ads weren’t going to be enough. In a fast-changing crisis, the carmaker needed a PR platform where it could listen and interact with consumers.

How Ford Uses Social Media

At the risk of giving away too much of what we do (not really - everything we do in social media is in the public, so you just need to pay attention or search around to find out), I'd like to share with you a little bit about Ford Motor Company's approach to social media.

Toyota, looking for positive spin, turns to Twitter

If ever there were a company in need of positive spin it’s Toyota. With the relentless grind of safety recalls and suffering sales, the Japanese automaker has tapped Twitter to help repair its image. Toyota launched a branded channel on TweetMeme with help from Federated Media.

Are you paying more attention to paid search in 2010?

A recent research report from Borrell Associates projects that the total U.S. ad spend for new cars will rise to $19.2 billion this year from the low of $18.4 billion in 2009. Of that total spend, franchised car dealers account for the majority of all auto ad dollars spent online. In 2009 they spent about $3 billion online, compared to $1.7 billion for manufacturers.

Three ways to extend a search-marketing program

At this point most automotive marketers know that search marketing is an incredible vehicle for reaching their target customers. It’s highly relevant, highly targetable and is generally one of the most efficient and effective channels in a marketer’s ad mix. The problem with search marketing, though, is that it doesn’t scale beyond the level of user-initiated searchers. For most businesses, this is a problem, especially when their search-marketing campaigns are mature as are most campaigns of OEMs who have been active in the search space for many years.

Continue reading 'Three ways to extend a search-marketing program' by Matthew Greitzer on Headlightblog.com

Using Facebook fans to improve automotive marketing

Facebook Fan Pages have become the most recent in a long line of social media “must-haves” for automotive marketers –- but what do they really tell you? And are they even helpful?

Does a high fan count equal success?
It’s no surprise that lots of people feel strongly about their favorite automotive brands and show their allegiance to those brands by flocking to automakers’ Facebook Fan Pages. Consider the high fan counts for some of the best-known automaker Fan Pages: As of Jan. 22, 2010, I found an average of nearly 111,000 fans across 33 OEM Fan Pages, which is pretty amazing considering the average fan count across all Facebook Fan Pages is only 4,600. Even for the 24 OEM Fan Pages with fewer than 111,000 fans, the average was just shy of 30,000 while the nine above-average pages weigh in closer to 330,000 fans each. The top five, in descending order, were Porsche, BMW, Audi, Jeep and Volkswagen.

How Ford Got Social Marketing Right

Ford recently wrapped the first chapter of its Fiesta Movement, leaving us distinctly wiser about marketing in the digital space.

Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, "agents" used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG in Gran Turismo 5

In a previous post for Headlightblog.com, I covered Citroën’s plans to build a supercar that was originally designed for Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 5 Prologue videogame. Recently, Mercedes-Benz announced that its SLS AMG supercar will be featured in Gran Turismo 5 (GT5), an expansion on Prologue that is scheduled for release in March 2010. GT5 is also the first of the main numbered series to be developed for the Sony PlayStation 3.

Continue reading 'Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG in Gran Turismo 5' by Malcolm Ong on Headlightblog.com

Audi Uses Social Media To Shape Los Angeles Design Challenge Entries

December's L.A. Auto Show is only a few weeks away, and carmakers from around the world are gearing up for the event, which promises to be a bit livelier than last year's rather somber proceedings. During the show, the Los Angeles Design Challenge competition will be held, showing off the latest from the minds of some of Southern California's best design studios.

A step-by-step guide to better email program measurement

Email offers the automotive industry a fantastic channel through which to build loyalty with consumers and add value to the car-ownership and brand experience. Further, with consumer spending dropping and marketers’ budgets being cut, it’s more important than ever to acknowledge the importance and effectiveness of the email channel and how it fits within the organization’s overall marketing efforts.

Continue reading 'A step-by-step guide to better email program measurement ' by Whitney Hutchinson on Headlightblog.com

Media Case Study: Lifting performance with dynamic creative optimization

Even though overall Certified Pre-Owned sales are down this year, a number of automakers — including Hummer, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Subaru — experienced double-digit sales increases between Jan.-Sept. 2009 compared to the same time period last year.

Earlier this year the Digital Marketing group at Mercedes-Benz USA, a Razorfish client, looked to maximize the online performance of its CPO program. Already reaching the target audience through a highly targeted media campaign, the next lever to pull was creative. Without incremental budget to support a heavy creative rotation of monthly offers, the Razorfish media team looked to third-party dynamic creative partners.

Continue reading 'Media Case Study: Lifting performance with dynamic creative optimization' by Rachel Chan on Headlightblog.com

Mini iPhone Road Assist app - another example of a 'useful' mobile application

Mini have previously created an iPhone game and an Openness app to make life more interesting and MINI USA have now launched the MINI Road Assist application.

Puma and Ferrari: a creative partnership

For many years, Puma and Ferrari have been pioneering one of the more cutting edge partnerships by combining their know-how and their images. Now, to launch the new Motorsport line, Puma sneaked into one of their official stores and filmed their employees.

Reinventing Your Brand

They say that "necessity is the mother of invention," but it certainly has a track record of nurturing reinvention as well. Over the years, countless brands have reinvented themselves out of necessity. They may be dealing with a PR catastrophe like a product recall or bankruptcy filing. Perhaps they are responding to industry changes and the evolving consumer market. Or, they might be endeavoring to expand their market reach by broadening their customer base and the applications of their product.

Audi Car Configurator on Surface

The first realtime 3D vehicle configurator application for Microsoft Surface, which was developed by Frankfurt-based Neue Digitale / Razorfish, was showcased earlier this month at the annual Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA), the world’s leading automotive fair.

Honda's Social Media Backlash Is Turning Into A Wildfire

 

What if you launched a Fan Page on Facebook for your brand, and only the "haters" came? What if your new product's Tweets on Twitter sang only a negative note? It is one of marketer's biggest fears when using social media.

Measuring Social Influence Marketing in the automotive industry

For the auto industry, it was easier to choose which brands to benchmark. The largest auto brands together have significantly greater market share than all the other auto manufacturers. We chose the corporate brand rather than the product brand as auto company reputations are built on the corporate brands first and foremost. With product brands in a state of flux, given all the issues affecting the auto industry, we also saw this as a more useful approach to take. The total number of conversations over a six-month period was 2,106,523.

Continue reading 'Measuring Social Influence Marketing in the automotive industry' by Shiv Singh on Headlightblog.com

Can Automotive marketers keep up with Facebook?

Facebook’s vanity URL land grab is an excellent example of just how fast the company moves. On June 13 Facebook users and brand marketers (who hadn’t submitted the proper info in advance) needed to log-in on Friday night 9:01 PST to secure their own Facebook vanity URLs. These URLs ensure that automakers like Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen have a dedicated place to direct consumers.

Continue reading 'Can Automotive Marketers Keep Up With Facebook?' by Garrick Schmitt on Headlightblog.com

Ford launched community customization

To promote its new pony car, the 2010 Mustang Ford has made a customization portal. You can choose the color, motifs, and even pieces of the car (wheels, hood, license plate...).

Virtual Sports Car to be Built by Citroën

I am part of the first generation to grow up with video games; a demographic often referred to as Generation Y and, more specifically, the Video Game Generation. This population segment represents more than 75 million 17- to 28-year-old prospective car buyers who will be buying one out of every four new vehicles in the U.S. by 2010. It’s no surprise that automakers have begun to collaborate with Polyphony Digital and other game development studios to try to capture this market, as evidenced by the design and strategy behind Nissan’s R35 Skyline GT-R.

Continue reading 'Virtual Sports Car to be Built by Citroën' by Malcolm Ong on Headlightblog.com

 

Jazz calculator: VW goes green

How does one convert CO2 emissions into music? VW will show you...

Get a free digital song with Mazda’s interactive print ad

Mazda uses kooaba’s innovative Point – Snap – Find solution to make the print ad of their new car model Mazda 2 interactive. Readers are invited to snap a picture of the ad with their mobile phone and send it to kooaba via MMS.

Microsoft: 'We touch every piece' of auto business

If you’re a first responder, which would you prefer to use to get to the site of a car crash? Google Earth? MapQuest? If you work for OnStar, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth is now the preferred choice.

Volvo - Simbin: play racing

In honor of the launch of the Volvo S60 Concept, Volvo has collaborated with the video game developer SimBin to bring us a completely free and innovative concept:

Buzz around Twitter: VW and the Iranian elections

Recently, everyone is talking about Twitter, the microblogging service with a very impressive growth curve. This week, two completely unrelated incidents are creating lots of buzz around Twitter.

Wikitude on wheels: Toward vehicular augmented reality

I recently picked up the T-mobile G1 running the Android OS and for the past few weeks have been comparing it side-by-side with a jail-broken iPhone still on AT&T. There are a lot of great applications for Android that have been created so far — such as Ecorio (profiled in this blog), Google Voice (I now have all phones, landline and mobile, synced to one number), and Wikitude, which I have to admit was the real driver behind this purchase.

Continue reading "Wikitude on wheels: Toward vehicular augmented reality" by Kyle Outlaw on Headlightblog.com

BUZZCAST #71: Scott Monty / Ford Motor Company

Scott Monty is head of social media for Ford Motor company. In this interview he explains how Ford recognized that is was strategically important for them to be a leader in digital communication and that they needed to keep pace of what’s going on externally.

Wikitude on wheels: Toward vehicular augmented reality

I recently picked up the T-mobile G1 running the Android OS and for the past few weeks have been comparing it side-by-side with a jail-broken iPhone still on AT&T. There are a lot of great applications for Android that have been created so far — such as Ecorio (profiled in this blog), Google Voice (I now have all phones, landline and mobile, synced to one number), and Wikitude, which I have to admit was the real driver behind this purchase.

Continue reading "Wikitude on wheels: Toward vehicular augmented reality" by Kyle Outlaw on Headlightblog.com

How automotive marketers can leverage digital video technologies

Automotive marketing sits at a crossroads. As if macroeconomic conditions weren’t enough of a challenge, key media channels like TV are being subjected to radical transformation, including viewer fragmentation, ad avoidance behavior and fundamental shifts in the business models of all sides of the ecosystem. Auto marketers have historically been quick to embrace new advertising opportunities and, true to form, many have begun experimenting with our topic today: dynamic and personalized video.

Continue reading "How automotive marketers can leverage digital video technologies" by Jeremy Lockhorn on Headlightblog

Ford bets on social media for its next American compact

Next year, the Ford Fiesta makes its U.S. debut. The superefficient, sporty compact has proved enough of a success in Europe and Asia to draw the attention of American drivers, and their newfound thirst for all things small. It’s become an object of transatlantic envy — much of it expressed in online forums — since its launch late last year. In past years, such yearnings were likely to go unrequited. But Ford Motor’s “One Ford” strategy, which is pushing toward a single global lineup, means this small car will be navigating American roads in 2010.

Continue reading "Ford bets on social media for its next American compact" by Arthur Vaughan on Headlightblog.com

Can the right online strategies rescue Detroit?

To prescribe a marketing cure for the auto industry's current woes at all -- let alone in a short article like this one -- would like be like providing cold medicine to someone whose stuffy nose is caused by a systemic, life-threatening disease. So, the key here is not so much to put forth a magic cure or two but to address some of the root causes of the current domestic auto situation head-on, combined with information that all of us in the interactive space can use to help Detroit be more efficient in reaching the right consumers at the right time, and to drive efficiency and results for an industry that is very important to the future of our country.

How to rescue the flailing auto sector

While the number of interested car shoppers is staying relatively flat, consumer confidence in the auto sector is diving rapidly. Here's how to turn that around.

TNS Media Group's CEO Dean DeBiase shared some fresh research with iMedia's Driving Interactive audience that addresses the particularly challenging road ahead for auto marketers, and where the positive signs lie.

How automotive can survive the perfect storm

With the economic climate impacting every facet of business these days, the new message from the automotive industry should be: why buy here, and why buy now. Few would likely jump at the idea of presenting a keynote addressing the potential for growth in the auto industry these days, but Sonic Automotive's VP of retail strategy, Rachel Richards, did just that to kick of iMedia's Driving Interactive in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Honda lights up the entire page on Vimeo

Advertising crosses the ages and adapts to any media: print, radio, television and the Internet. This last evolution is still in progress. After the enormous success of Wario Land (already 6 months ago) on YouTube, it is now Vimeo’s turn with a hybrid campaign by Honda.

The VOLVO Twitter ad on Youtube - An innovative banner for the launch of the XC60

In the past few days, while flipping through YouTube videos, one cannot help but have the eye catch the gigantic rich media banner (950x250) dedicated to the launch of the new Volvo XC60.

Ford Fiesta movement: 100 connected ambassadors in the US

For almost a year, Ford have immersed themselves in social media networks and other new ways of communicating. In fact, it is not by chance that they hired Scott Monty to head this aforementioned marketing division. He attended the Marketing 2.0 conference to explain the new strategy of the brand, but for those of you unable to attend, an interview with Fox is available on his blog.

Mini launches a new viral video - When fake plays fake

Mini has just launched a new viral video for the Mini Clubman. This video pokes fun at the current practice of exposing fake viral videos (not actually officially approved by the company that is being advertised), which are abundant all over the Internet. Indeed, most advertising today is fixed.

Auto promotion: Using Twitter in the automotive industry

In recent months, the automotive industry has quickly established a sizable presence on Twitter, the Web’s most popular micro-blogging service. A high-level review of its presence, however, reveals that – like many industries – it’s making the leap to the still newish communication venue with varying degrees of success. While some participants have taken to the medium swimmingly, it’s surprising how many treat Twitter almost solely as an opportunity for naked self-promotion, seldom or never engaging directly with their customers, providing customer support or other useful information.

Continue reading "Auto promotion: Using Twitter in the automotive industry" by Robert Stribley on Headlightblog.com  

Reva: the car of tomorrow? A different kind of car to bloggers

Spawned from an American university project almost 20 years ago, the REVA became "produceable" after about 7 years of research and development to finally become one of the first brands associated with electric cars in the world! The cars are built in Bangalore, India...and soon to be manufactured in a factory run on solar power in order to minimize carbon emissions by the brand, which truly goes to show REVA’s commitment to conserving the environment.

Are luxury brands making a run for online experiences?

 Thanks to an article published in the last edition of "Magazine," "Le luxe et la presse dans 10 ans" ("Luxury brands and the press in 10 years"), we’ve been able to learn a bit about today’s and tomorrow’s luxury brand communication trends.

Leverage the voice of the consumer

Let's face it—consumers really don't trust advertisers like they used to. In an era when savvy consumers are bombarded with more than 3,000 marketing messages a day, traditional marketing channels become increasingly less effective.

Tough times call for tough measures

The American automotive industry is at a turning point; its likelihood to succeed in a changing economic landscape is dependent on its ability to pragmatically develop and implement revolutionary business strategies. But how does an industry that changed how business was conducted in the 20th Century decide which strategies will be most innovative and effective in today’s environment? By embracing 21st Century solutions.

Contine reading "Tough times call for tough measures" by Adam Canissario on Headlightblog.com

How to fix a leaky web site

This may sound shocking, but your company may already have more than enough traffic on your Web site to achieve your business goals—but the problem is that you may have a leaky Web site... That is, prospects and customers are visiting your Web site, but very few are taking the next step to do business with you.

Invest in owners during the slow economy

In a tough new-vehicle sales environment, when you are not building cars, you should be building stronger post-purchase relationships. Strengthening ties with current owners offers a powerful brand-growth opportunity now, and will pay further dividends when the frozen credit market thaws and consumer dollars come off the sidelines.

Continue reading "Invest in owners during the slow economy" By Grant Owens on Headlightblog.com

BMW Concept scribble video

With the onslaught of actor-less videos, I’ve started asking myself if actors have gotten too expensive or if good ones are just too hard to come by. Don’t tell me you missed the controversial Motrin ad, the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights video (read article here), or the Mini Clubman Etch-A-Sketch video (see below).

Email imperatives for the automotive industry

Email offers the automotive industry a fantastic channel through which to build loyalty with consumers and add value to the car-ownership and brand experience. And in these tough economic times, with consumer spending dropping and marketers’ budgets being cut, it’s more important than ever to acknowledge the importance and effectiveness of the email channel and how it fits within the organization’s overall marketing efforts. It’s also a good time for marketers to take a step back and refocus on their email program and the value this high-return channel brings to the organization and its customers. Many marketers today, across numerous industries, are still guilty of running simplistic email programs that do not capitalize on the strengths of the channel, leading to consumer irrelevance and loss of interest.

Continue reading "Email imperatives for the automotive industry" by Richard Rushing on Headlightblog.com

Ongoing List of Social Media Examples in the Auto and Car Industry

US - Social Media Marketing adoption has spurred forward with the technology industry, as well as with consumer and lifestyle products, when people are passionate about a topic, the want to talk about it.  Here we take a look at some examples of social media use in the auto industry.