Social Leaderboard_Indian Luxury Car Brands_20 July 2012
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Transcript of Social Leaderboard_Indian Luxury Car Brands_20 July 2012
SOCIAL LEADERBOARD
LUXURY CAR BRANDS: 1st– 20th July 2012
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
SUMMARY
Under Leveraged Communities:
Shack evaluated India's three top-selling luxury car brands – BMW, Audi
and Mercedes-Benz – to derive a comparative benchmark of their standing
on social platforms.
What we found was a consistent story of under-leveraged and under-
engaged communities; one that was primarily attracted by contests
and online syndication of events to the brands' presence on the
platforms. The brands were particularly found wanting for better
content and cultural connect during periods when there were no
contests, product launches or drive event.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
While such initiatives are key components of most brand activity on social
platforms, they only form the periphery than the core of an actively
leveraged and engaged community for the brand. This missed opportunity
presents a significant problem for the brands, as building and nurturing
communities that represent the values of the brand is the key to achieving
sustained growth through the use of social platforms.
Healthy growth accrued through social platforms, according to Shack, is a
function of greater engagement with the existing audience while also
reaching out to newer audiences. This requires brands to identify, connect
and nurture audiences with relevant content. Our research shows that
majority of the current initiatives by the three brands do not adhere to this
basic tenet.
For the period of 1st July 2012 to 20th July 2012, the benchmark finds
Audi has ranked the best, BMW has ranked second and Mercedes-Benz
has ranked third.
Through the rest of the year, Shack will publish updates to this leaderboard
on a fortnightly basis, with an analysis of our findings and our observations.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
INDEX:
INTRODUCTION
WHY COMMUNITIES?
CURRENT STATUS:
tangible incentives attracting disinterested members…
SOCIAL LEADERBOARD:
week-on-week performance of top 3 luxury car brands…
BMW:
new 3-series launch…
AUDI:
R8 drive experience…
MERCEDES:
promoting the new B-class…
METHODOLOGY:
the research Process…
ABOUT SHACK
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
Introduction
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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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
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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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
Tangible Incentives Attracting
Disinterested Members
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
Social Leaderboard:
1st – 20th July 2012
Brand
Current 1w ago Current 1w ago Current 1w ago
Audi 8,27,459 8,23,678 37.5% 37.5% 4.9% 17.3%
BMW 7,82,915 7,77,256 35.5% 35.4% 9.3% 0.5%
Merc 5,96,817 5,95,300 27.0% 27.1% 5.9% 1.9%
Community Size Share (%) Activity Grade
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
Audi:
With the opening of the Buddh International Circuit, track days have
become a highlight event for all luxury and sports car makers to drive
offline engagement. Audi was no different as shown by its recent R8
Drive experience. While the exclusive few who got to drive the car
felt involved, Audi failed to capture and translate this experience to
the digital platform in a manner that leveraged and engaged its
desired target audience.
Audi's Activity Grade fell by more than 50% compared to the
Week 1 (7 Jul – 13 Jul) which saw higher activity due to contest-
related interaction and the celebration of its 103rd anniversary. Focus
initiatives, once over, always bring about a falloff in Activity Grades,
Audi (W1) Audi (W2)
efficiency 4.0% -
contest - 0.3%
technology 0.9% 0.2%
experience 0.0% 0.2%
progressive 0.2% 0.2%
luxury car 8.4% 1.4%
R8 0.3% 1.1%
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5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
but it is unhealthy for any brand to experience such a drastic falloff
especially when the baseline to which it draws back is on the
considerably lower side.
Ironically, in Week 1 (7th Jul – 13th Jul), Audi fared better on the
Reconnect Grade for ‘efficiency’ (4.1% vs. 0.4%) even though it is
BMW that focuses on Efficient Dynamics in its cars and it is considered
a key essence of BMW’s brand.
GAP/Opportunity Analysis:
The contest by Audi generated the least amount of buzz among all the
3 brands. Audi did not leverage its (re)connect with ‘efficiency’ in
Week 2 which it should do going forward if it wants to maintain and
extend its position at the top of the pack.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
OBSERVATIONS
To further improve its grades, Audi should cater in a better
manner to a community having the following profile 1)
young urban professionals 2) motorsport enthusiasts 3)
technology buffs 4) car enthusiasts who appreciate the
technology, design and performance of an Audi.
While the association with motorsports fits well with the Audi
story, the engagement doesn’t go beyond track days. The
community also needs a place to stay connected and interested
even in the absence of any on-ground events. Such engagement
would also translate into increased buzz during events and
product launches.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
BMW:
BMW saw a big jump in its Activity Grade as compared to the Week 1
(7 Jul – 13 Jul) driven by contest-related activity around the launch
of the new 3-Series.
Relative to the community size, the contest failed to generate any
significant buzz with a mere 3000 users active during the month on
its platforms. This has significant implications for the RoI on such
initiatives for the brand.
BMW (W1) BMW (W2)
progressive - 1.8%
contest - 2.0%
efficiency 0.4% 1.2%
exclusive 0.0% 2.0%
launch event - 2.0%
ultimat3 - 3.0%
3-series - 7.3%
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5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
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Similar spikes were observed during the launch of the X1 in Aug
2011 and the Mission Impossible contest in Nov-Dec 2011. We
believe that such activities only provide an engagement channel for
users who are incentivised mainly through tangible rewards.
Majority of these ‘flash mobs’ do not represent the brand’s desired
target audience and they often don’t identify closely enough with the
essence of the brand.
BMW scores low on the Reconnect and Authority Grades, due to the
asynchronous overall communication. This contributed to a disjointed
overall experience for the user trying to connect with the brand on
its various digital platforms. It is critical for brands to be able to
(re)associate themselves with a consistent set of values and concepts
and also have those values represented consistently across all
platforms they choose to be on.
GAP/Opportunity Analysis: Our projections show that an uptick in
BMW’s Activity Score by 1.3x from the current level would have
helped BMW be on top the leaderboard.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
OBSERVATIONS
To improve its score we believe that BMW, given its positioning and
brand attributes, can cater to the community comprising 1) Brand
enthusiasts: young professionals in the fields of architecture,
fashion design, film making and other such creative pursuits 2)
Owners: Corporate professionals and self-employed businessmen
who have an interest in design, art, fashion, theatre and the finer
things in life. This requires both initiatives and content to be tailored to
meet the needs of the two groups.
The campaign for the new 3-Series was overloaded with product
information for a brand and a product which already has good recall
value. The brand should instead focus its efforts on creating
engagement channels for the cultural interests of their core
community.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
Mercedes-Benz
When it comes to displaying growth in the grades, Mercedes-Benz
finds itself in the same boat as BMW and Audi.
The recently announced 'Ultimate Trails' contest was the
primary factor responsible for the week-on-week growth in
Activity Grade for the brand.
Merc (W1) Merc (W2)
exhilarating - 2.1%
contest 0.3% 0.2%
touring trail - 2.1%
adventure 0.6% 2.1%
Tourer - 2.1%
B-class - 2.1%
C-class 0.0% -
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5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
Through the on-going contest, Mercedes-Benz primarily wants their
community members to connect the theme of adventure with the new
B-class.
However, the performance in this respect has been average as
evidenced by the Reconnect Grade for ‘adventure’ (2.1%) which is
below par compared to the Activity Grade (5.9%) for the week.
GAP/Opportunity Analysis: Finishing last, Mercedes-Benz has the
most amount of work to do in the coming days. To top the current
leaderboard, the brand has to at least increase its Activity Score by
5x.
Considering that Mercedes-Benz is already experiencing the peak of its
contest-driven growth in Activity Grade it is obvious that doing more
of the same won’t get them to top the leaderboard.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
OBSERVATIONS
The existing Mercedes-Benz community in India includes
families with a long lineage of owning Mercedes-Benz cars,
urban professionals such as lawyers, CAs in the age group of 46-60
years and self-employed businessmen.
Mercedes-Benz has always been known for being ‘The Luxury Car’
representing royalty, power and class. However, due to the slip in
their market share to the might of BMW and Audi over the last few
years, they are reorienting their strategy to cater to a younger
audience comprising emerging entrepreneurs in Tier II and Tier III
cities as well as middle-aged professionals in the metros. The
introduction of the B-class sports Tourer is a step in this direction.
The community angle for Mercedes is more intricate given that they
have to connect with their existing audience while also having an
offering for the younger audience they are trying to cater to through
their new product lines.
So an offering which combines lifestyle and luxurious living
with the new and avant-garde would serve as a relevant context
to drive engagement.
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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
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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©Shack Companis. All Rights Reserved. Social Leaderboard: Luxury Car Brands
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