Saab Soft Launches 9-5 Via iTunes AppStore

In iPhone and iPad application news, Saab released a new app for the launch of the 9-5. I believe this is Saab's first application on either platform and unfortunately it's not much of an effort.

The application merely mimics the content from their website where feature pages, a 360, an image gallery, and intro video are provided as content in the app. There is nothing more than the reuse of existing content repackaged for an application. It's very similar to what Mercedes did for the C63 AMG two-years ago.

I personally would've like to have seen some handraiser implementation within the application so the company could engage further with the app's users provided of course they are not disappointed after downloading something they basically could have seen on their iPhone or iPad's web browser.

Oh well, hopefully we'll see some more interesting things as Saab gets ready to spend big for their "Change Perspective" 9-5 launch.

Chevy Uses Location-Based Service to Lift Brand Perception

The Chevrolet team is down in Austin, Texas this week for the South by Southwest (SXSW) technology and arts festival. As part of Chevy’s marketing effort, they teamed up with location-based service company Gowalla (a competitor to the better known Foursquare) to create a nicely done driver service for those checking into the Austin Bergstrom Airport.

Basically, when one checks into the airport’s location on the Gowalla application some people are randomly served up a free ride from the airport to downtown Austin in a Chevy vehicle of course.

I really like the online, offline integration here. It definitely provides Chevy with some positive brand lift for the well-connected people attending the SXSW festival. It's a nice way to reach a socially active audience that is sure to Tweet, blog or even talk in person about what a cool thing Chevy and Gowalla did on their trip.

For one blogger’s personal experience with the Chevy Gowalla offer checkout this post from the blog DigitalBeforeDigital.

Crayon's Joseph Jaffe shares his impression of the Gowalla Chevy execution:

Ferrari 458 Italia, Aspirational Branding at Its Best

So you can’t afford the new Ferrari 458 Italia. Bummer. It would really look great in your driveway and you would look better behind the wheel of it.

So, what does a brand do when it’s not about attracting in-market buyers, but more about attracting aspirational excitement for your brand? You provide a ton of ways to experience the vehicle virtually.

The new 458 reveal site presents several ways for aspirational Ferrari fans to engage with the car. The site features demonstration videos on chassis, engine, braking and other performance related features, typical Ferrari content. The sports car is also showcased with large full site images that make the red 458 pop on the page.

One can continue their experience in a rich “Downloads” section where the traditional screensaver and wallpaper images exist. What’s cool is the rich sound of the car can be loaded to a mobile phone with special files for iPhone users. So that every time your boss calls you can hear the acceleration of your stress represented by the acceleration of a monstrous 562 hp engine.

Unfortunately, the engagement stops at the site. I attempted to Register for Ferrari news after going through three pages of registration - guess one has to be highly motivated to get any news from a super car company. Well after completing the extensive registration, an error was generated causing my registration to fail and now I had to re-enter everything all over again. After a second attempt -- I’m uber-motivated apparently, the registration failed again.

I can only assume it’s technical but I’m starting to think that it’s due to my choice on the form for the question: "Would you consider the 458 Italia as your next Ferrari?" Where I entered “It will always be a dream of mine.”

So maybe covertly Ferrari is not interested in engaging aspirational fans, but rather someone who may be able to afford it sometime in the future, not us dreamers.

For now, there are some great takeaways with the iPhone/mobile ringtones, wallpaper, and screensaver. At least I can experience the car in an affordable way.

Buzz Study Releases First Social Automotive Brands Report

Buzz Study is a blog maintained by software company infegy. Their social media product, Social Radar, is a social media tracking tool. To promote their tool, they produce a monthly Top 50 Social Brands list that is now being accompanied by a first ever Top Social Automotive Brands report (U.S. market only.) The first example was published Tuesday. You can see it here.


How are brands measured? Well according to Buzz Study the Top Automotive report uses the same methodology as the Top 50 report they publish. "To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during April 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during April 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand."

One of the things Buzz Study doesn't mention about their ranking is what significance there is of having a top ranking? There is no sentiment study posted showing if buzz is good or bad. You only simply learn if there is a lot of discussion going on across the web. In Chrysler's case, this probably isn't a good thing.

Ford came out on top in the automotive brands and #25 on the all brands Top 50 report. When your CEO is on YouTube Twittering with his Head of Social Media Scott Monty, it isn't that surprising. Plus there are some big campaign pushes in the social space, like The Fiesta Movement.

Brands with very few owners, brand advocates or an older customer will likely not improve much on this list. Also, brands with very limited marketing budgets or no new product news will place low too. That's probably why we see brands like Buick, Mercury, Lincoln, and Suzuki at the bottom.

The surprising one at the end of the list is Infiniti which has a very hot, buzz worthy pool of products like the G37 and FX. This just shows that Infiniti isn't really investing in this space and is not part of their media mix right now. One trite example I did was Google "infiniti social media", one of the top spots for the automotive brand is a G20.net enthusiast site. If you don't know, Infiniti hasn't made the G20 for seven years. Point made.

On the other hand, BMW has been very active on Facebook, iPhone (yes I knew iPhone is not social media, but doing things on iPhone generates social media buzz) and has a large amount of brand oriented blogs, even one that I run. Sorry had to promote my other blog for a second. BMW hasn't made any push into Twitter, showing that you don't need to be in every social media environment to have an impact.

It is an interesting report and could be a data point to see how large-scale social media marketing efforts by automotive brands can impact their ranking on Buzz Study's report; though, I'm sure infegy would rather you just purchase their social media tracking product to analyze your efforts.

Porsche Enters The 4th Dimension: Wasting Time

The Porsche Panamera, a four-door Frakenstein of a Porsche, just launched its campaign The 4th dimension. The new Panamera. According to AutoEvolution, “A central component of the campaign is a six-issue interactive online magazine (www.porsche.com/panamera) that builds excitement leading up to the vehicle's launch in September.”

For those who don’t remember from physics class, or were lucky enough to avoid it, the fourth dimension is time, which leaves one to wonder who has the time to read six issues of an interactive online magazine? I’d venture to guess that the Panamera consumer is someone who is entrepreneurial, has a family, loves technology, and spends a lot of his or her time working; thereby, leaving little time to sit through “The Porsche house of treasures” article.

Fortunately, I have no life so I went through the site and found several articles justifying Porsche’s decision to build a four-door sports car. For those who didn’t know, Porsche actually developed a concept 4-seater in 1959 – The Porsche 754. This information thus justifies the decision to build the Panamera, even if some blogger naysayer feels they shouldn’t have. It’s in their DNA. So, there!

The good news for the busy Panamera consumer, well at least the ones with an iPhone in their pocket, is the six ezines are available in an iPhone application (download the app for iTunes here.) The iPhone application is actually far more navigable than the website. The article content is easier to page through and the images look great on the screen.

Navigation aside, the content still suffers from too much marketing speak and very little information. Granted the car doesn’t show up in dealerships for a couple months, but the extensive content Porsche produced for this campaign misses what most consumers are after: specifications, availability info, and pricing. But it's obvious this is about marketing the brand, not catering to buyers. The least Porsche could do to appease buyers is provide some linking to the detailed vehicle content at Porsche.com.

It’s too bad Porsche couldn’t have hired Autoblog’s Sam Abuelsamid to write for the Panamera ezine. Why? Because his one article on the car’s In-depth Tech Briefing and First Drive was far more informative and interesting than all of the encyclopedic nonsense used to justify the brand’s decision to make a four-door Porsche.

Rarely Does an iPhone Application Rival the Car

BMW’s new Z4 iPhone application An Expression of Joy is definitely an expression. A joy? There are some moments. Mostly though the application is BMW speaking to itself, not to us.

The application is a very literal interpretation of the Z4’s campaign that features South-African artist Robin Rhode who used the car as a brush driven across a giant canvas. This was BMW’s role reversal concept where instead of BMW cars becoming art cars painted on by famous artists, the Z4 became the brush that drew the painting. It’s an interesting concept but I think the whole campaign is a bit esoteric, oh wait, that’s right BMWs are German, so maybe that is to be expected.

So taking this esoteric concept to the iPhone is rather boring. Guess what you can do in the application? You can drive a Z4 across a canvas using a gas pedal, brakes, change paint colors on tires, and using the iPhone’s accelerometer you can turn the car to drive around the white canvas. Okay, that was fun for one second.

Users stop using iPhone applications pretty quickly, with only about 1% of downloads resulting in long-term audiences according to Pinch Media. When do they become effective? When they meet the needs of the user. Granted, most branded automotive applications are an extension of the campaign website and that’s all. At least with the Z4 application, you can create art and even save it to your photo gallery on the phone to use as wallpaper (see my example to the right. I'm quite the artist, don't you agree?) After you’ve done that you are very likely to delete it like most iPhone automotive applications.

At least it’s nowhere near as bad as the Kia Soul application that only lets you change the car’s color. You shake your phone and the car changes color. Neato!

The issue with branded iPhone applications is making the applications relevant to the user, not the automotive company. BMW tried with this literal interpretation of their campaign and tried to make it playful and savable for later use through the game, but it really is all about the campaign finding a home on the iPhone and less about BMW finding long-term a home on your iPhone.