Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: March 2011

March was a rather subtle month without a lot of on-site fan growth ads from the automotive brands, but it was the first month a new brand returned to the United States. It’s been 27 years since Fiat has sold a car here. They returned with the Fiat 500 and I have added Fiat to this list. Like BMW, MINI and Mercedes, Fiat also has a USA-focused Facebook fan page, but like those brands I am reporting on the global brand’s Facebook fan page, but do record all of the USA-focused fan pages.


Meanwhile, Acura continued to run and promote their “Compete Like a Pro” contest for the all-new TSX Sport Wagon (as an interesting side-note, the TSX Sport Wagon is the Japanese Honda Accord wagon that everyone was hoping for back when the Honda CrossTour was announced last year causing quite an uproar on the Honda fan page.) The “Compete Like a Pro” contest is an interesting example of fan growth from marketing, CRM, and engagement.

Back in January they promoted the contest and bought some Facebook ads to support the effort creating a 23% increase in fan growth. In February, some marketing continued but most of the effort to promote the contest was done through Acura’s email communications (see image at left from a February 22 email) and there was some promotion by contestants to create interest (votes) for the contest that resulted in a 10% fan growth. As the initial surge of contestant promotion tapered, so did the fan growth, as it was only 5% in March when the contest was closing the voting.

Many of us see friends in our own communities promote – ask for – votes when they do an online contest. This initial surge in friend participation comes to an end rather quickly and then near the end of the contest, the highly competitive top people in the votes make an additional request for votes, but this is a much smaller group. What we see with the Acura contest is fairly typical and shows that the biggest impact in fan growth is still advertising to promote instead of counting on organic growth. The final 5% growth in March is a normal organic fan growth so the contest was doing very little in fan growth. Of course it might of (and hopefully did for Acura) create more clicks to dot.com and engagement which were probably the primary goals of the contest.

There was very little else going on in March for the automotive brands on Facebook. Lexus saw some positive growth with the biggest bump of 22% fan growth coming from their heavy media buys around the all-new Lexus CT200h.



Note: Unfortunately I missed a month in March, a first since starting this monthly post in November of 2009. I did record the fan numbers and you can see the early fan numbers from March in this post. I never did a February 2011 report, but have all the raw data if any one wants it. Please send me an email at red335i@yahoo.com if you do.

One Way to Get Your Dealers Involved

I’m guilty like most automotive bloggers of covering the larger brands more than some of the small players in the market. One brand that doesn’t get a lot of play is Mitsubishi. Well I wanted to find out what a Mitsubishi was doing with their efforts in social media and to my surprise I came across an unique way for the brand’s Facebook page to include their dealers.

Right now Mitsubishi is asking its fans to vote for the best dealer walkaround video. A walkaround video is where a dealer employee shows the features of a vehicle. The Facebook fans were asked to select from several dealer videos finalizing on three videos that are currently competing for a $2,500 prize to be awarded to the winning dealership.


Some of the videos are typical walkaround experiences where the dealer representative simply details every single feature, one with background Minnesota polka music. There definitely is a format to what the dealers were supposed to do here as all the videos cover every feature inside and out and run about 4 minutes plus in length.

Other videos are more entertaining with a bit more style, but still with substance. “Check out my curves and check out my lines,” sings one Omaha dealer who realizes there has to be some personality to keep people’s interest. Unfortunately like the more professional examples, none of the videos are that compelling and sitting through three 4 minute videos with basically the same exact content is a lot to ask, even from your fans.

I do like the idea of getting dealers involved in a real way with the greater Mitsubishi Facebook fan base and it incorporates fans thoughts through voting which video is best. Unfortunately, the $2,500 prize money that is offered is offered to the winning dealer and not a supporting local charity which would’ve had a more compelling appeal to a national audience.

Regardless, Mitsubishi is getting inventive with how to engage fans and finding ways to bring their dealers into the conversation. Sure this example isn’t going to turn into viral gold (total video views on the 3 final videos is at: 1,839 views), but it’s one way to extend goodwill between the OEM’s efforts in social and letting the dealer network reap some publicity too.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: January 2011

There wasn’t a lot of growth in January’s Facebook fan numbers. Perhaps it’s all of the ad agencies working on their Super Bowl ads. Many brands were pushing their vehicle sites and a couple of German companies were focusing on their USA Fan pages, instead of their global brand pages.

Both Mercedes-Benz and BMW created USA focused brand pages in 2010 (see the USA pages growth in the image below to the left.) Mercedes just completed a “Tweet Race” contest between 4 teams spending all kinds of money on celebrities, charities, providing luxury vehicles, and all congregating this weekend at the Super Bowl in Dallas, Texas. Even though it was a “Tweet” contest, Mercedes spent quite a bit on advertising the event on Facebook throughout most of January.

BMW ran several advertisements promoting the new X3 and the all-new 1M. The X3 Matchup was promoted in January ads on Facebook to promote their coming Super Bowl ad. Players match different images and watch for clues in the Super Bowl ad to win a X3 for 2 years and a VIP trip to their Spartanburg plant, museum, and most importantly their Performance Driving School. Facebook fans are asked to build a X3 where they try to guess the exact build of the one appearing in their Super Bowl ad. I’m guessing silver.

Toyota heavily promoted their name the “Prius Goes Plural” campaign after the brand launched several new Prii, Prius, Prium vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show in early January. It seemed as if every day Toyota had the reachblock bought on my Facebook’s Home screen. With all of their promotion, only one of my Facebook friends voted and I have a ton of friends who are car nuts and in the industry (661 friends total.) Sure my checking my friends against people participating is far from scientific, but it did surprise me when the typical auto ad on Facebook has at least 3 or 4 of my friends liking it. Voting of course is different.

An important note on Toyota’s Prius campaign, it didn’t drive fans to the brand’s Facebook page; hence, the measly 2% growth rate for them in January. Fortunately, Toyota has a pretty strong presence with their Prius brand and many in the industry wonder if they’ll ever move Prius off to its own brand. Perhaps with so many new models that scenario may be playing out.


Finally, the strongest growth came from Acura. They recently abandoned their separate vehicle pages so now whenever they have a vehicle promotion they drive traffic to their brand page. In January, they ran a promotion to their “Compete Like A Pro” contest for the all-new TSX Sport Wagon. What’s great here is that they grew their overall fans instead of just a single vehicle fan page so they can promote other products to those fans. It was a smart move for Acura and their growth in January shows how it helps the overall brand presence.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: December 2010

Milestones are a time for celebration. BMW gave thanks to its fans when it crossed 1/2 million fans. Audi recently celebrated its reaching 2 million fans and Mercedes Benz also showed some appreciation when it hit 2 million fans. All of these prior celebrations involved a wall post and video, but none of the automotive companies have done anything truly creative to celebrate such a milestone until now.

Porsche passed the 1 million fan mark a couple weeks ago and as part of the celebration they are placing a special model Porsche in the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. Fans can ask for their name to be on the displayed vehicle by signing up on their Facebook fan page tab called "1,000,000". It's a creative way to bring the milestone to life, much more interesting than some thrown together ad agency video.


Major milestones aside, GMC blew everyone away with the most significant monthly fan gain - a whopping 95%. Like most double-digit changes, GMC's rise is attributable to media spend driving fans to their Facebook page. GMC has a sponsorship with the NFL that has fans voting for the "Never Say Never Moment of the Week." There are weekly prizes, a trip to the Super Bowl and a chance to win a 2011 GMC Sierra Denali.

Hyundai ran some reachblocks in the beginning of December. Other companies that did some marketing in Facebook were Lexus, Chrysler, and Dodge (this is not a comprehensive list just some of the ads I personally saw.) Mercedes-Benz worked to promote their Tweet Race. The ad units sent people to the recently created Mercedes-Benz USA Facebook fan page.

Yes, Mercedes like BMW, Mini and Smart now has a "USA" fan page. As part of their way to create interest for the page they are doing the "World's First Twitter-Fueled Race" which looks basically like a road-trip with four teams driving from four different cities to the Super Bowl in Dallas. This sounds eerily similar to last year's Chevrolet SXSW road-trip scavenger hunt. (Look for a coming article on Mercedes' event around when it begins on February 2.)

A final insight in December comes from Mazda. I find it interesting how some brands promote sales events (Acura has one right now), or they keep a corporate logo, or others promote a new product as part of Facebook's profile image. Mazda is promoting their new Mazda5 but they also found a nice, clean way to promote their other social media brand destinations in the profile picture. The promotion of other channels and their dot.com site is effectively communicated.



Download the Excel file: Facebook Auto Fan File (December 2010)

Would You Pickup this Hitchhiker in Your Benz?

I love the truly bizarre marketing ideas. One of favorites was last year's An American Werewolf in Yaris. It has been replaced by an even stranger idea - this one from a Berlin street artist and photographer Stefan Gbureck for Mercedes-Benz. It's called "Tramp a Benz", and for those lacking a German to English dictionary "tramp" is basically German for "hitchhiking."

The idea comes from the German advertising agency Jung von Matt. The travels of street artist Gbureck are captured digitally via a blog and Facebook fan page, and what blog doesn't have a Facebook page these days - except my blog.

I wonder how this would translate in America. I'm guessing only hitching rides with Benz drivers would involve a lot of walking and wondering if hitching a ride with a Chrysler when Mercedes owned them would count.

The only time I ever picked up a hitchhiker was in high school at 16 when I saw two older girls (probably 18-20.) I cruised up in my '76 Chevy Vega and they giggled a lot at me, but fortunately didn't kill me and throw my body in a vacant lot which is pretty close to what my mom said would happen if I picked up a hitchhiker again.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: October 2010

BMW continues to rack up Facebook fans quickly. They were near 3 million fans at the end of October and a now over 3 million as of early November. What’s interesting isn’t BMW’s continued rapid growth nor is it Audi following close behind; instead, what’s interesting is another German luxury marquee has decided to play the Facebook fan game. Mercedes-Benz grew an astounding 65% in October and surpassed their own first million-fan milestone.

This month Lexus and Toyota both redid their profile images to include additional messaging. Lexus is cross-promoting their Twitter and YouTube accounts while Toyota takes a page from Dunkin Donuts, but with their own twist by featuring a fan’s vehicle. Toyota is also promoting a new shopping application for mobile phones called mLot.

Some brands kept up their brand page marketing as Cadillac continued to run reachblock ad units featuring their new Cadillac CTS Coupe that drove fans to the main Cadillac fan page. Volkswagen also promoted their brand fan page. The VW ad units featured the new Jetta that launched last month. What was interesting is that VW used to promote vehicles and bring people to their vehicle fan pages, not the main VW fan page. Seems they are making a change and focusing on the main fan page, not surprising as most of the action is on brand pages not vehicle pages.


Also interesting is quite a high number of fan pages seeing 20% plus growth in one month. Several of the brands didn’t seem to have ad units running in October yet they experienced some rapid growth typical of buying media.




Download the Excel file: Facebook Auto Fan File (October 2010)

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: September 2010

Let’s get the big news out of the way. BMW surpassed the 2 Million fan number September 28th. On July 5th they hit 1 Million fans, so in a mere 3 months they gained over 1.1 Million fans. BMW has been on a fan rampage and finished the month promoting their secret reveal (I’m guessing it’s the new BMW 6-series.)

Hyundai saw a massive increase in fans as they nearly doubled their fans in September from 41,653 to 82,773 fans. This was done in part by some reachblock ad units I did see Hyundai run on the Facebook site. Others doing reachblock ads where Cadillac and Toyota continued to promote their safety and user story ads throughout the month of September.


Honda worked on promoting their Honda CR-Z Hybrid, but the ad units drove consumers to the CR-Z vehicle page. Honda saw a typical 10% gain on the brand page. Unfortunately, I think they missed an opportunity to drive more fan traffic to their primary brand page. It’s interesting to note that at the end of September Honda’s luxury family member Acura decided to abandon their vehicle fan pages. It will be interesting to see if Honda makes a similar move with their product fan pages or if other brands will follow Acura’s lead here, especially as brands probably look to 2011 and 2012 as ways to increase social media efficiency as social destination effectiveness comes clear with years worth of supporting data.

MINI finished their major Facebook campaign where they gave away a MINI Countryman from their Facebook fan page. Fred Manuel Roldan Rivero from Lisbon, Portugal won the MINI Countryman and the brand shared the giveaway PR event with their fans. Overall it was a nice promotion for the Facebook fans but MINI didn’t really see any major bump in fans which I find interesting because this contest may have more to do with energizing its fans than say growing the fan base. I don’t have any of the ad units promoting the event, if there were any, but MINI only saw a mediocre 11% increase in fans in September and XXX% in August. It’s tough to judge the contest as I don’t know what MINI was trying to drive. I assume handraisers and contest entries but Facebook fan growth didn’t seem to be a goal or a goal that wasn’t met.

In another notable move, Scion experienced a 34% jump that probably was due to the launch of Scion in Canada. Previously, Scion was only available in the United States. Scion launched the brand in Canada last month and one can assume the launch helped some fan growth from those to our north.

Acura Shuts Down their Vehicle Facebook Fan Pages

I have never been a big fan of automakers starting vehicle fan pages. There are exceptions to my thinking, for example halo cars like the Mustang or Corvette or when one vehicle is more compelling than your brand alone - like the Subaru WRX.

My thinking is you are lucky to get a person to fan any of your fan pages, so why not drive people to your brand fan page where you can talk about the car/truck/suv they are interested in, but also market some of your other products and brand messages. It's a great opportunity to showcase your product portfolio.

Acura has decided this is the way to go. They started with a strategy of having the Acura brand fan page, but also have a tab called "Vehicle Lineup" where fans could click and go to each vehicle fan page. Now Acura fans click the vehicles in the tab and are taken to the Acura.com website vehicle page and isn't this all about driving consumers to your optimized shopping site? Okay, it's not all about that, but you should be working to get fans to your .com site.

The other reason to not have unique vehicle fan pages, especially for brands like Acura that are more defined by the brand than one vehicle, is the extra resources to manage the vehicle pages and also you start segmenting your fans so your advertising becomes a discussion around whether to drive Acura fans or vehicle page fans. Why not simplify?

On an interesting note, Acura did not get the fans moved from the vehicle pages to the brand page. I'm guessing a lot of brands will not change their strategy because they cannot simply transfer fans from one product to a brand page. This is the old issue with sunken costs and how some tend to hold on to bad investments simply because they spent a bunch of money already.

It will be interesting to see if other automakers (and other industries) will catch on and focus on building their brand, not individual product pages.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: August 2010

It was bound to happen and September was finally that month where I didn’t have an opportunity to get the monthly Facebook Fans report up on the blog in the first couple days after capturing the numbers. Fortunately, I did record all the fan counts on September 3, but with the Labor Day weekend and a week of social media fun on the new job (more here at TechCrunch.) I didn’t get a chance until now to finally analyze this month’s data.

First, let’s talk about the brand I used to do digital strategy for: Lincoln. Lincoln’s growth in August definitely received a major jolt as it increased fans from 4,533 to 13,161 leading to a 190% increase. Most of this can be attributed to a contest Lincoln was running in July and August where the brand showcased a chance to be the first to test-drive the all new Lincoln MKZ Hybrid. Lincoln created a special tab for the MKZ and also accompanied the promotion with some email marketing and advertising on Facebook. Of course, the jump is significant, because Lincoln’s fan base is a small number so adding almost 9,000 fans will cause a big boost percentage wise.



Another brand with a rather small fan count, but also a generous gain in fans was Mitsubishi. They saw a 44% gain in fans as they added nearly 13,000 fans in the month. They had several sweepstakes where fans could win a Flip SlideHD Camcorder, $500 gas card, Nikon Digital SLR camera, and ultimately a trip to Japan. Giveaways are certainly an effective way to gain “Likes” as we see in several reports about why people “Like” a brand on Facebook with the number one reason being discounts, support for company number two, and number 3 to get a freebie (full study from ExactTarget.)


Finally, in the giveaway to get Fans Facebook strategy, Mini also participated with their Win a Countryman contest. They saw a strong 36% increase in fans. Product launches naturally tend to increase fan counts beyond the normal 3-6% organic growth, but by adding a giveaway Mini boosted their growth significantly.

Toyota continues to do a lot of marketing on Facebook. They continued throughout August with ads throughout the Facebook site where they mostly promoted their Auto-Biography contest where participants submit videos about their personal experience with Toyota. Toyota is letting the message come from customers, a very smart message after a year I’m sure the company can’t wait to be over.

The other big news for August is BMW is rapidly gaining fans to cross the 2 million fan mark. They just crossed 1 million fans back in July. Yet, they continue to still spend time on the BMW USA fan page. Segmenting fans by creating unique fan pages has never been a good approach in my book, especially considering you can segment your messages to your fan base by using Facebook’s features to send a message only to people in a particular geographic location. That issue aside, they are dominating in the automotive Facebook fan grab.

Have We All "Like" Lost Our Minds

I was clicking through a Lexus ad for their new IS "Wield Precision" campaign when I noticed on the landing page at Lexus.com that I could "Like" the page. The hero image area of the page showcasing the car driving down a road had 167 'Likes' already. 'Like' of course is Facebook nomenclature for 'engaging' in an activity demonstrating one enjoys a piece of content. What started as a way to like someone's Facebook status update or like a photo posted has turned into 'Like' anything fever.

I just wonder what's the real point? Have we lost our minds as marketers thinking if someone clicks a 'Like' button that there is somehow more value to that view than just a page visit? Or have we as consumers lost our minds thinking someone cares we visited a web page and now we must show our satisfaction?

Even if someone does 'Like' the Lexus IS page it barely registers it on Facebook where the brand gets a small one line message that I did something. What I liked isn't even very clear (see image at right.) To clarify, I'm not picking on Lexus. I'm just using this latest example from the Lexus IS marketing team.

In the end, it really doesn't matter because Lexus did get a few more people to share an experience with only the cost of having a developer add a Facebook Like button.

Now please 'Like' this blog post... :)

Tweet Buick Social Media Trio for a Test Drive

Buick is interested in appealing to a more youthful customer and they are making strides with the Enclave, LaCrosse, and now the new Regal. As part of their outreach, Buick has hired three social media "Ambassadors" (their word) where one can tweet the @DriveBuickChi trio and "the test drive comes to you", provided one lives in Chicago (that's what "Chi" stands for in case you were wondering...)

It's an interesting concept and surely takes some of the hassle out of car shopping for those who are serious potential buyers. I wonder though how many tweets will be people testing how this concept works with no intent of really buying.

They are tweeting pictures of test drivers like @BrianGainor (Brian Gainor) @LauraGainor (Laura Gainor) who tried out the LaCrosse last week. Laura is a social media strategist for a marketing+pr agency and blogged about her experience.

Buick is spreading the word by posting a photo gallery on its Facebook page. I'm not sure if other efforts are happening to get the idea some reach. They have also created a Facebook event from August 1 to October 31 for those who want to attend a drive. To further increase interest, test drivers can win VIP tickets to an event if they are lucky to find some tickets under the test drive car's seat.

I do like the idea of Tweet to test drive. It's an interesting idea and one that could work very well for a dealership. One wonders why this concept wasn't extended to a dealer instead of going with three social media experts. I get the obvious reason, but why not train a dealer and test-pilot how effective this can be and then broaden its reach to other markets.

Facebook and the Death of Micro-Site

There is a move in digital marketing to replace the micro-site with a Facebook fan page. The latest casualty is the Nissan Master the Shift lifestyle marketing campaign.

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know this campaign since I previously covered it. It has been around for over 2 years. Nissan has done a great job with the email marketing efforts for the campaign where they are constantly giving away free sports related equipment to contest entrants. Regular email communications are sent as new content is added and contest prizes are released.

Basically, the program is a lifestyle marketing effort linking the passions of running, cycling, and yoga featuring three key personalities: Lance Armstrong, Ryan Hall, and Tara Stiles. The experience includes several videos showcasing different exercise and training tips while also promoting Nissan vehicles, the Nissan Altima was the lead vehicle for two years but now it’s been replaced by the Nissan LEAF.

This year Nissan shifted (pun intended) their micro-site to Facebook where all of the prior website’s content went into various Facebook tabs. This worked pretty well for the athlete content as each person has their own tab and video views seem decent; though, it’s tough to truly gauge as I’m not sure how much advertising was done to drive people to the Facebook page. Also, is some video views were probably done through YouTube and Google search, not all entirely through the Facebook experience.


One wonders though if the move to a Facebook fan page is a better, more effective, decision than keeping the micro-site.

The most significant issue I can see from the Nissan Master the Shift change is how buried the vehicle content is now. One can only get to the vehicle information using the Favorite Pages section of the Facebook fan page. The vehicle content really gets lost in the new experience, but this may be a result of the campaign’s goals having to do more with contest entries (the entry form is the first thing that shows up when one clicks an ad) and driving people to the unique content created for each of the athletes tend to be more primary objectives.

Another concern with moving to Facebook is that the user now has several interruptions that never existed with a micro-site. For instance, if a friend on Facebook initiates a chat, Nissan could lose that person’s attention. Also, any status update or new message information while on Facebook could further distract the visitor. There is of course just the fact that one is on Facebook and may simply and easily return to their Facebook news feed. The usability, call-to-action person in me questions how so many other clicks can interrupt the experience and thus lose the person Nissan is trying to reach.


The whole change from micro-site to Facebook fan page is an experiment. I would love to see how well the change is for Nissan, but without any primary data analytics it’s difficult to assess the strategic decision, but it’s an easy realization for the Nissan team as they can see if their content is getting a higher engagement rate by moving to Facebook.

Nissan is also launching an 18 stop event marketing campaign, as detailed here (though the story incorrectly says the Master the Shift campaign "began in April.") Getting out to events is a great way to reach this target consumer. It also provides another way, besides banner ads, to get the word about Nissan's working with these athletes and an additional way to promote their Facebook fan page.

Volvo Asks to be Part of Your Social Connections

Volvo sent out a "Stay in the Loop" email that solely communicated connecting with the company on Facebook and Twitter. It's the first time I've seen any automaker send out an email communication out to their mailing list that only promotes the brand's social presence. Most emails are putting some sort of link to a Facebook page or Twitter account, but that is usually relegated to the end of a quarterly email communication.

There's nothing really significant here from Volvo, but it is interesting to see the brand solely promote its social links with zero promotion of a vehicle. What's nice is the call-to-action is straight forward, but do customers or potential customers really want your company sending them emails about liking them on Facebook?

Audi Petitions U.S. Facebook Users to Bring TT RS Here

European sports cars that typically stay in Europe are often begged to be brought over by automotive journalists and die-hard enthusiasts. Audi is taking a different path, possibly to prove how much begging there really is for a their only available in Europe TT RS sports car, by asking social media participants on Facebook and Twitter if they are interested in signing a 'petition' to bring the TT RS to the United States. Supposedly, Audi will do it if there is enough interest.

As someone intimately familiar with product planning, the whole idea of asking random people in social media to show interest in your car is a bit ridiculous. Sure it creates some nice social media engagement numbers like app installs on Facebook, tweets on Twitter and comments on your brand fan page but is the effort truly reaching real customers of the TT RS. Product planning isn't about social popularity, but rather marketability and profitability of a product against the competition in its segment, at least that's a good portion of the decision. Asking random people if they want X product is not.

Regardless of how sincere Audi is about their 'petition', the effort now includes some advertising on Facebook and an application where one can share their seriousness for buying one and provided the images load -- they did not for me after many attempts -- one can share pictures of the TT RS.

Audi is definitely finding a new way to turn the begging done by enthusiasts into a social conversation and that at least is an interesting concept. Now we'll just have to see if 122 application Likes on Facebook is enough to influence product planning.

Automotive Facebook Fans by Brand: July 2010

BMW and Audi are definitely proving all it takes to drive significant Fans on Facebook is a healthy marketing budget. Both brands had over 40% gains in July and both crossed the laudable 1 Million-Fan mark. Considering it took BMW years to cross the half-a-million-fan mark back in February 2010, where they celebrated the milestone by launching a YouTube video, it is interesting to see how ad impressions on the social media site can drive significant gains for aspirational, luxury car brands. (Note: the BMW Facebook Fan page was assumed by the brand in November 2009 where it had been managed and originally created by a BMW dealer in Spain. So, the first 1/2 million fans was dominantly, if not entirely, gained organically.)

Some of the smaller volume brands like Mitsubishi, Smart and Scion also experienced over 40% growth leading me to believe both also ran Facebook advertising this past month.

Toyota gained an impressive 38% fans in July. They were actively promoting their latest social media user generated content idea called “Auto-Biography” where the social media team selected a few stories to be “animated with the help of [their] artistic friends”… i.e. ad agency. This is interesting, as Toyota has been running several safety videos in response to their much publicized recalls.


Here we finally see Toyota recovering from the bad public relations and turning to the voice of the customer, which I think is a good move based on where the brand is today. Let the consumer voice showcase their passion for the products. It was a risky bet, except that Toyota approves every story before it is posted on the Facebook tab.

The only odd thing in July was a negative fan dip for the Infiniti brand. It would be interesting to see why this is happening. My guess is that some Infiniti fans are a bit turned off by the social media team’s wall posts promoting the Cirque du Soleil promotion; though, this guess is just that a guess. Looking at the fan page comments on the Cirque posts, several fans do enjoy the association. It still could be due to an increased frequency of the team pushing every marketing promotion on the page's wall. Without knowing the Facebook analytics and insight data, it is difficult for me to assess what is going on, perhaps their Facebook team should look at frequency of posts and also when the fan drop may have occurred since it is pretty rare to see a brand page lose fans in a month.