Word of mouth is becoming the most popularly used marketing medium these days as companies large and small are turning to social media for publicity and awareness. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are used by many in order to present their message to their potential customers. Now car manufacturers are eschewing celebrities in favor of social-media stars to sing the praises of their automobiles to their numerous followers.

As we see, almost every car company in the United States has initiated a social media campaign on social networking sites. Most of these campaigns are about a specific model of the automobile. For instance, Toyota has used online videos to market the Lexus CT 200h. These videos have the famous comedian Whitney Cummings riding and conversing with social media stars as the car is taken for test drive in their local towns. These drives show Baratunde Thurston, Web editor of the Onion; Brian Solis, a marketer who emphasizes social media; and disc jockey DJ Qbert.

The use of online videos to endorse and market a particular product is not a new idea. The catch that they especially use here is that the people taking the test drive are also tweeting, blogging and posting comments on Flickr about the car; thus reinforcing the message of the video ads. This spreads the promotional message in their respective groups of followers and initiates a publicity campaign. No doubt it is a very smart move.

From the marketing perspective it is a strategy that always works. According to Scott Monty, Ford's global digital-communications manager; "People trust people like themselves, and when we can tap into these people, it will sound less like Ford tooting its own horn". Ford itself is using this approach partnering with opinion leaders as its new social media campaign will use 100 people who have strong social media followings. This campaign will be focused to test drive Ford’s 2012 Focus across Madrid and will be included in the company's “Ford Focus Global Test Drive” advertising campaign.

It seems doubtful that such campaigns will cause charges of “astro-turfing”. Government, as well as companies has learnt valuable lessons from the mistake that Wal-Mart made when it did not reveal that the “grassroots bloggers” who were travelling to Wal-Marts all over the country and were writing blogs about their memorable experiences, were not totally real and these people were actually paid. Consequently, new guidelines were issued by the Federal Trade Commission for bloggers referring to ethical concerns especially the issue of disclosing compensation that they get for writing product reviews. Therefore the car manufacturers along withy the social media opinion leaders need to be extremely careful with their campaigns.

Brian Solis explicitly commented after the incident that he is not under any contract to write positive reviews on Twitter and that Lexus has only asked him to reveal the fact that he is compensated to be part of the campaign. From Solis's comment, we can see that automobile manufacturers accept certain risk with these programs and both parties are under pressure as these social media activists can even criticize the product if they feel that way. At the same time, when they admire the product, it gets noticed by the followers because they know that the bloggers are not saying it under any contract.

These social media publicity campaigns are highly effective and reach many people. Ford's campaign last year that was about Fiesta attracted 7 million people watching it on YouTube, four million related Tweets, and 130,000 exclusive visitors to a website. 80% of the website visitors did not own Ford previously and such is the effect of that campaign. The amount it had for Ford is also exceptional as it paid less than $600 to performers for around 8 hours. This amount is unbelievably minute for such huge auto manufacturers for a campaign that made that big an impact.

Posted: 02/12/10 13:55