social leaderboard_indian luxury car brands_17 august 2012

SOCIAL LEADERBOARD

LUXURY CAR BRANDS: 4th Aug – 17th Aug 2012

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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands

INDEX:

SOCIAL LEADERBOARD:

week-on-week performance of top 3 luxury car brands…

SUMMARY

Digital strategy for experience events going astray like lost sheep?…

OBSERVATIONS

RECONNECT GRADE:

o BMW

o AUDI

o MERCEDES-BENZ

WHY COMMUNITIES?

METHODOLOGY:

the research process…

ABOUT SHACK

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Brand

Current 1w ago Current 1w ago Current 1w ago

BMW 11,25,269 11,16,822 39.9% 40.3% 37.4% 7.9%

Audi 10,91,846 10,56,291 38.7% 38.1% 3.6% 3.1%

Merc 6,01,776 6,00,387 21.3% 21.6% 5.9% 4.1%

Community Size Share (%) Activity Grade

SOCIAL LEADERBOARD

4th August – 17th August 2012

7.9% 37.4%

2.8%

10.3%

4.1%

5.9%

5,00,000

6,00,000

7,00,000

8,00,000

9,00,000

10,00,000

11,00,000

12,00,000

- 9.0% 18.0% 27.0% 36.0% 45.0%

Co

mm

un

ity

Size

(m

emb

ers)

Activity Grade

BMW (W5)

BMW (W6)

Audi (W3)

Audi (W4)

Merc (W5)

Merc (W6)

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SUMMARY

Digital strategy for experience events going

astray like lost sheep?

The dawn of branding and

marketing signalled that the

success of a company was not

dependent on just a world-class

product anymore. Now,

consumers buy in anticipation of

owning and using the product. For instance, if a consumer buys a

luxury sports sedan, with it she/he also buys the experience of motor-

racing.

The highly interactive digital ecosystem offers a tremendous

opportunity for brands and marketeers to amplify this experience

among its target audience. But how far has the thousands of photo

likes, contest entries and live tweets helped brands in achieving the

aforementioned goal? We investigate.

The Buddh International Circuit has created an avenue for the likes of BMW,

Audi, Mercedes and Porsche to showcase the superiority of their luxury line.

They organize track day events where select owners and a few 'influencers'

get to experience the car on the circuit under expert guidance. The objective

of such initiatives is to strengthen the association of brand owners,

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enthusiasts and loyalists with the brand’s attributes. As Audi India head

Michael Perschke says "The Audi sportscar experience has been developed

in line with the Audi brand's 3 core value pillars - sportiness,

progressiveness and sophistication. These qualities and an exciting format

together create a very unique and ideal opportunity for all car enthusiasts

out there who have always wanted to dynamically explore sports cars, but

have never had a chance to do so."

Here, the role of the social web, because of its pervasiveness and

interactivity, is to provide a similar user experience to brand lovers not part

of the drive event and “earn” new brand followers through the word-of-

mouth subsequently generated. However, ShackMatrix’s measure of the

Reconnect Grade observed that Audi and Mercedes-Benz did not improve its

appeal with racing enthusiasts as a result of these initiatives and there is a

lot of improvement desired in this respect. The focus of these online

initiatives is volume rather than the quality of the engagement.

The concept of using influential individuals or groups to build up public

support for an initiative is not a new idea. Edward Bernays, regarded as the

'father of PR', widely advocated and practiced it for the likes of P&G and

Lucky Strike. But the digital ecosystem offers brand’s the ability to provide a

continuous brand experience that complements the traditional BTL

marketing efforts and sustains consumer association in the long term

increasing average levels of brand recall, recognition and image. In order to

tap this opportunity, marketeers must rethink their strategy and invest

in building communities, like the Harley Owners Group, that gives members

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

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a sense of ownership towards the brand. Only then can a brand create true

brand advocates who help market experiences to potential consumers

through word-of-mouth.

OBSERVATIONS

Reaction and feedback about potential buyers’ test drive experience

should have logically followed the launch of the new BMW 3-series

which would have pushed up the Reconnect Grade for the brand’s

message of ‘driving pleasure’. On the contrary, the grade showed that

only 1 in every 100 brand followers connected with the brand’s

message. BMW’s Activity score is still riding on the strength of

syndicating 3-series reviews by auto magazines and TV shows, which

will be hard to sustain once the initial coverage dies off.

Audi took the contest route to provide a chance to their fans to

experience the new Audi A6 TDI at the Buddh International Circuit.

However, only 1% of their activity appealed to racing enthusiasts which

raises questions on the efficacy of contests in the social space to attract

the right audience for niche events. Audi also covered an off-roading

tour, with Gul Panag as one of the travellers, in order to highlight the

superior features of their new 'Quattro Drive' technology. However, this

brand association only resulted in 5 in every 500 brand community

members connecting with this theme.

Mercedes-Benz's AMG drive academy initiative targeted at "real motor-

racing enthusiasts" failed to stir up online buzz as the motor-racing

theme appealed to only 3 in 200 brand community members.

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4.0%

1.9%

1.1% 1.1%0.2% 0.04% 0.02%

-

3.0%

6.0%

9.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

1.3%1.1% 1.0%

0.6%

0.1% 0.01% 0.00%-

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

2.0%

1.7%1.5%

1.1%0.9%

0.3% 0.2%

-

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

RECONNECT GRADE

4th August – 10thAugust 2012

7:


8.1%

6.7%

3.1%

1.8% 1.7%1.0%

0.2%-

3.0%

6.0%

9.0%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

2.0%

1.1%1.0%

0.2% 0.2%0.03% 0.03%

-

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

2.0%

1.4%1.3%

1.1%

0.2% 0.2% 0.1%

-

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%

Re

con

ne

ct G

rad

e

RECONNECT GRADE

11th August – 17thAugust 2012

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About the Social Leaderboard

The Leaderboard updates the results derived from our internal tools and

methodologies on a bi-monthly basis, based on which we will bring out our

conclusions. Shack uses a proprietary grading mechanism

ShackMatrix™ to derive the Authority, Activity and Reconnect Grades,

which are key determinants of a brand’s social presence. Read more

about the Matrix and Grades.

Why Communities? Create, Connect, Curate — The Shack Manifesto for Building

Communities With the social online world becoming an important cog in a customer’s

relationship with a brand, there is a need for a common language that can

give meaning to the seemingly unstructured social data scattered across

platforms that represents a brand’s interaction with its core community.

As has happened with the introduction of any new communication medium,

practitioners are making the mistake of using the measuring stick (such as

views and reach) of traditional advertising media to gauge success in the

social web. For over a half a century, we have been thinking about

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marketing in terms of campaigns with a very clear beginning, middle and an

end. But the online digital world is currently in the process of being rebuilt

around people and what we know as the social web, in a few years, would

simply be the web.

Therefore, long term success for brands depends on leveraging these

human relationships to create a strong sense of community around

products, concepts and values that are dearest to the brands.

How we measure effectiveness in Online Communities?

The ShackMatrix™ is a proprietary framework that enables assessment of a

brand’s digital footprint in a holistic way. It is a common language designed to

understand the value of a brand’s online efforts expressed through 5 grades that

combine the understanding of traditional branding with the dynamics of a social

online world.

Presence Grade: Measures how well is the brand represented on digital

platforms.

Authority Grade: Measures how authoritative is a brand’s owned-

channels for information on the brand and its products.

TG Grade: Measures the percentage of the desired target group mix

active on the brand’s owned platforms.

Activity Grade: Measures the level of activity on existing channels.

Re-Connect Grade: Measures the extent to which community members

connect and identify the brand with the attributes desired by it.

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Data Methodology

We take online performance as a holistic concept. While size of the brand’s

community and level of activity are important factors, the profile of the TG,

the authority of the brand’s platforms and its recall are also equally

important ingredients.

In calculating the ShackMatrix™, we assign weights to the different metrics

on individual platforms in order to combine them into a single comparable

grade that is relevant to the digital objectives of the brand.

The weights are decided based on the relative effectiveness of the platform

to a brand’s community as well as the brand’s own digital goals.

Data Validity and Integrity

We source the data from the brand’s official digital properties. Our scope is

restricted by the data made available through the APIs of the social

platforms we cover.

The coverage of data in this report is restricted to Facebook and Twitter.

More detailed and granular metric studies are done for clients on a project

basis.

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About Shack

Shack is a digital marketing company which brings together brands and their

customers in carefully crafted, wholesome communities, providing exceptional

experiences for all.

We leverage communities for brands:

In order to create and maintain buzz around your brand you need your target

audience to form lasting relationships with your brand.

We build platforms for the communities:

Being a one-stop solution for all your community building and web-based marketing

needs, we craft comprehensive campaigns, based on careful strategy, encompassing

an entire digital eco-system.

We develop content for the platforms:

Along with creating engagement tools both online and off-line we also encourage and

facilitate generation of remarkably effective and compelling content, in a methodical

manner by our own team, and in a random manner, by your community members.

We measure the impact on the brand:

You need to monitor the impact that the campaign has on your brand. This impact is

not something hypothetical, it is hard, tangible, three-dimensional data that not only

tells you where you presently stand, but also tells you where you need to go and

what path you need to follow with the help of Shack’s proprietary Digital Ecosystem

Management tool. Website || Blog || Twitter

http://www.shack.co.in/

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social leaderboard_indian luxury car brands_17 august 2012

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