A New Era in Auto Advertising

A New Era in Auto Advertising

Despite studies indicating young people arent that interested in owning an automobile, it is still critically important for automakers to reach them because they represent future sales, no matter what they think at present. Traditional media is not the way to do it, however, as there is little evidence to indicate they watch television commercials or listen to radio; hence the arrival of Buzz ad agencies, or ones that specialize in using social media to get the word out about a product.

They have names like Gaia Online, Undercurrent and Action Marketing Group and they deal in getting members of a target audience to advertise for a company using social media like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the like.

Ford is using this approach to launch its Fiesta here in 2010. The car is targeted at 14-30 year olds who might be interested in a $13,000 Toyota Yaris or comparable Honda Fit. Ford has loaned 100 of the Fiestas to a select group of agents for six months and asked them to post videos on the web, and blog or Tweet about their lives and Fiesta experience. The reasoning behind the strategy is that likeminded people will follow these Web-savvy hipsters and thereby be enticed to consider a Fiesta.

Toyota had a variation on this theme when it launched the latest version of the Scion brand and also used the website Second Life to allow people to customize and use their Scion in that virtual world.

Ford thinks this kind of advertising is a great way to get more people to experience the Fiesta even if they can’t get behind the wheel. A spokesperson for the company says that since the start of the program, the videos and photos the agents created have been viewed 4.3 million times on YouTube and 540,000 times on Flickr. “These videos may not be entertaining for us, but if someone is following the agents, it’s entertaining for them,” the spokesperson said.

Watching videos of how entertaining people use and drive a product may be the new wave in auto marketing, but experts in online marketing predict that the real breakthrough will come when realistic virtual test drives reach the scene in a few years. Volvo is already experimenting with the technology and other automakers are apt to follow rapidly. Consumers can now do extensive comparison price and features shopping via auto sites, but that will pale in experience to comparative test driving.